Preamble

The House, met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

MEMBERS SWORN.

The following Members took and subscribed the Oath:

Captain the Rt. Hon. Herbert Dixon, O.B.E., Borough of Belfast (East Belfast Division).

Sir John Edmund Ritchie Findlay, baronet, County of Banff.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Private Bills [Lords] (Substituted Bills),

Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That in respect of the following Bill, intended to be introduced pursuant to the provisions of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Acts, 1899 and 1933, which the Chairman of Ways and Means had reported as intended to originate in the House of Lords, they have certified that the Standing Orders have been complied with, namely:

East Lothian County Council (Substituted Bill).

Perth Corporation Order Confirmation Bill [Lords] (by Order),

Consideration deferred till To-morrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — ITALY AND ABYSSINIA.

Mr. RILEY: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the League of Nations is now applying against Italy through the member States all the sanctions-powers provided in Article 16 of the Covenant; and, if not, what further sanctions can still be applied?

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Baldwin): The sanctions which are at present being applied may be briefly described as consisting of the prohibition of credits to Italy, the prohibition of the importation of Italian goods into the countries which have adopted this particular sanction, and the prohibition of the supply to Italy of arms and certain other articles of particular importance for the conduct of military operations. It would be open to the Co-ordinating Committee, should it consider this course desirable, to propose to the members of the League the adoption of any other measures which fall within the compass of Article XVI, paragraph 1 of the Covenant.

Mr. RILEY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what stands in the way of further sanctions being applied now?

The PRIME MINISTER: I am afraid I should require notice of that question.

Mr. GARRO-JONES: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if, with a view to assisting hon. Members to visualise the proposed terms of settlement of the Italo-Abyssinian dispute, he will endeavour to arrange, before the question is next discussed in the House, for a marked map to be hung in the Library?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Viscount Cranborne): Yes, Sir, the necessary steps have been taken to give effect to the hon. Member's suggestion.

Mr. COCKS: Will the Noble Lord see that a similar map is hung in the Cabinet room in Downing Street?

Colonel WEDGWOOD: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will propose to the Council of the League of Nations the inclusion in the terms of peace of compensation by Italy for the injury or death, through the agency of her forces, of unarmed persons of either European or native origin?

The PRIME MINISTER: This seems to be a point which ought properly to be left till the opening of detailed negotiations for the restoration of peace. It will then be for the parties immediately concerned to put forward claims for reparation.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Would the League support them?

Mr. GALLACHER: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the arrangements respecting the concessions asked for by the British and Italian Governments regarding Lake Tsana and the railway connecting Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, as outlined in the notes exchanged between His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador in Rome and Signor Mussolini, on 14th-20th December, 1925, are still in force; and, if not, whether the League of Nations has been notified by either of the interested parties that the proposals presented 10 years ago have now lapsed?

The PRIME MINISTER: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The second part does not, therefore, arise.

Sir FRANCIS ACLAND: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Dominions were consulted before terms of settlement were suggested to the Italian and Ethiopian Governments last week?

The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir. The Dominions Governments have, so far as possible, been kept informed of all developments as they have arisen.

Mr. GARRO-JONES: Is it not a fact that these proposals leaked out before the British Cabinet was consulted?

Sir F. ACLAND: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether it was intended to impose as a condition to Ethiopia obtaining a corridor to the sea that no railway should be built along it; and, if so, whether this was with his knowledge or with the consent of the Government?

The PRIME MINISTER: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will deal with this and other matters arising out of the proposals for a peace negotiation in to-morrow's Debate. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will be good enough to wait till then.

Mr. COCKS: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any intimation has been received from the French Government as to whether or not, in the event of an Italian attack on British naval forces, the French

Admiralty would be in a position to give immediate effective support to the British Navy?

The PRIME MINISTER: As has previously been stated, assurances of French support in the event of an emergency such as that mentioned by the hon. Member have been received from the French Government.

Lieut.-Commander FLETCHER: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with reference to his telegram to His Majesty's Minister at Addis Ababa instruction the latter to press upon the Emperor advantages to Abyssinia contained in the Paris peace proposals, to what clauses in those proposals these instructions refer?

The PRIME MINISTER: The instructions to His Majesty's Minister at Addis Ababa covered the proposals as a whole, and were not confined to any specific part or clause of the proposals. They emphasised the opportunity for negotiation thus afforded.

Mr. THURTLE: Will the Prime Minister say whether those instructions were sent by the Foreign Secretary himself or by the Foreign Office in London?

The PRIME MINISTER: I must have notice of that question.

Lieut.-Commander FLETCHER: asked the Secretary:)f State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any information as to the number of troops which have left Italy for Abyssinia since the receipt of the Paris peace proposals by the Italian Government?

The PRIME MINISTER: The answer is in the negative.

Lieut.-Commander FLETCHER: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any reply to the Paris peace proposals has been received from the Abyssinian Government or any request for their elucidation from the Italian Government?

The PRIME MINISTER: I understand that the Abyssinian Government have communicated direct to the League of Nations certain observations regarding the proposals. No reply has, as yet, been received from the Italian Government, but on 16th December the Italian Ambassador in London called at the Foreign


Office with a view to obtaining certain elucidations on points of detail. These proposals are, however, to be considered by the League Council which meets to-day, and His Excellency has been so informed.

Oral Answers to Questions — BOLIVIA AND PARAGUAY.

Mr. RILEY: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any steps have been taken to carry out the recommendations of the Buenos Aires Peace Conference that an International Commission should be set up to determine the responsibilities for the war in the Chaco between Bolivia and Paraguay: and whether he can give any particulars regarding this Commission?

Viscount CRANBORNE: On 2nd October last, the members of the Peace Conference at Buenos Aires signed a resolution providing for the establishment, in accordance with paragraph 7 of Article I of the Buenos Aires Peace Protocol of 12th June, 1935, of an International Commission to determine the responsibilities of every sort or kind arising out of the war between Bolivia and Paraguay. The Commission was to consist of three members, two to be appointed, on the invitation of Bolivia and Paraguay respectively, by the Governments of American States, and one, who should be a magistrate of the Supreme Federal Court or of one of the highest courts of the United States and should act as President of the Commission, by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. It was also provided that the Commission was to be constituted within 90 days of the signature of the Agreement of 2nd October. His Majesty's Government have not yet heard that it has been formed.

Oral Answers to Questions — PASSPORTS (FEES).

Mr. CREECH JONES: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the increased holiday traffic to the Continent, he will now consider the reduction of the fee for the issue of passports and renewals, or whether he will consider the possibility of the institution of short-term passports at a lower fee than that now charged?

Viscount CRANBORNE: This matter has recently been the subject of very careful consideration, but I regret that it is

not possible in present circumstances to contemplate the loss of revenue which would be involved in the adoption of either of the hon. Member's suggestions.

Mr. DAY: Can the Noble Lord say how much the loss of revenue would be?

Viscount CRANBORNE: Not without notice.

Oral Answers to Questions — LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

ASSYRIAN SETTLEMENT.

Mr. RHYS DAVIES: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the purpose of the meeting of the Council of the League of Nations which has been convened for 17th December, to discuss the question of Assyrian settlement?

Viscount CRANBORNE: The President of the Council Committee for settling the Assyrians in Iraq requested that a special meeting of the Council might be called for 17th December to consider various urgent points arising out of the Committee's report to the Council. The most important of these related to the constitution of a Trustee Board to undertake financial responsibility for the operation of settling the Assyrians in the Ghab area in Syria, and to carry out, in collaboration with the High Commissioner for Syria, the actual administration of the settlement. The meeting was duly convened, but has now been merged in the meeting of the Council subsequently convened for 18th December to consider the Italo-Abyssinian conflict.

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS.

Mr. BURKE: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will place in the Library copies of the handbook published by the League of Nations' economic section, on the Present Phases of International Economic Relations?

Viscount CRANBORNE: Yes, Sir.

DANZIG.

Mr. RHYS DAVIES: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been drawn to the dissolution by the president of police of the general workers' union of the Free State of Danzig, apparently on the ground of the opposition of the general workers' union to the transfer of German workers on unemployment benefit to the Reich; and whether His


Majesty's delegate to the forthcoming meeting of the League of Nations Council will take what steps are required in order to maintain the freedom of association and of speech which are guaranteed under the constitution of the free city?

Viscount CRANBORNE: As regards the first part of the question, my right hon. Friend understands that the president of police of the Free City of Danzig dissolved the general workers' union on 7th December, as stated by the hon. Member. As regards the second part of the question, the various questions affecting the constitution of Danzig will be considered by the Council of the League at its January session. It would be premature to make a categorical statement as to the steps which will be taken by the British representatives on that occasion, but the point raised by the hon. Member will certainly be borne in mind.

Oral Answers to Questions — SHANGHAI.

Mr. CHORLTON: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether His Majesty's Government have received any report on the relations between the Japanese in Shanghai and the Shanghai Municipal Council?

Viscount CRANBORNE: My right hon. Friend has received no special report on official relations between the municipal council and the Japanese authorities, which, so far as he is aware, are of a normal and satisfactory character.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARGENTINA (BRITISH INVESTORS).

Sir CHARLES CAYZER: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will request the British Ambassador in Argentina to inquire of the Argentine Government whether, as United Kingdom purchases of Argentine products are annually £25,000,000 more than Argentine purchases of United Kingdom products, the Argentine Government will set up an exchange clearing with Britain in order to reduce the remittance hardships now suffered by British subjects?

Viscount CRANBORNE: My hon. Friend will be aware that the Roca Agreement of 1933 contains provisions for

safeguarding United Kingdom interests in matters of exchange. I do not know to what special points my hon. Friend refers in speaking of remittance hardships, but if he has in mind the rate of exchange at which British-owned public utility companies have to make remittances, I would refer him to the reply given to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hertford (Sir M. Sueter) last Monday.

Sir C. CAYZER: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) whether he will notify the Argentine Ambassador in London that His Majesty's Government support the protest made by the British Ambassador in Buenos Aires on 5th December against the continued detention by the Argentine Government, for the sole benefit of Argentina, of money due to the British investors in the Argentine railways;
(2) whether he will remind the Argentine Government that the continuation of regulations which affect adversely the position of British capital invested in the Argentine railroad systems must be taken into account in relation to any renewal or re-arrangement of the Anglo-Argentine Commercial Agreement.

Viscount CRANBORNE: I assume that my hon. Friend in his Question No. 13 has in mind the speech delivered by His Majesty's Ambassador at the British Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Buenos Aires on 4th December. The views of His Majesty's Government on the position of the British-owned Argentine railways were made clear in the reply given to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hertford (Rear-Admiral Sueter) on 16th December.

Sir C. CAYZER: Is the Noble Lord aware that public opinion in this country will not agree to a renewal of the Anglo-Argentinian Commercial Agreement unless a satisfactory agreement has been arrived at with regard to the withheld dividends of the Argentine railways?

Viscount CRANBORNE: I think my hon. Friend will find that that matter is covered by my original reply.

Oral Answers to Questions — RUSSIA.

BRITISH SUBTECT'S CLAIM.

Sir WILLIAM DAVISON: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs


whether his attention has been drawn to the treatment of Mrs. Munce, a British subject, by the Soviet Government; and whether he will inform the House of the facts of this case?

Viscount CRANBORNE: Yes, Sir. Mrs. Munce is the widow of a British subject who was working under contract for the Soviet Government when he was killed through the negligence of another employé. The Soviet Government have decided that she is capable of working, and on these grounds have deprived her of a pension, although it appears that she has been dependent on her husband for the past 17 years and is unfitted to earn her own living by her age (she is nearly 50) lack of training and failing eyesight. His Majesty's Ambassador at Moscow has made repeated representations to the Soviet Government on this case, but so far without success.

Sir W. DAVISON: Will the Noble Lord see that this poor woman's case is not overlooked, and that our Ambassador is instructed to keep it in mind with a view to making further representations and obtaining satisfaction?

Mr. SILVERMAN: Is the Noble Lord aware that under the existing law of this country, if the same circumstances applied here, the same result would follow?

BRITISH GOVERNMENT POLICY.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the views concerning Russia expressed by himself in this House, on 11th July, 1935, still represent I he view of His Majesty's Government?

The PRIME MINISTER: Yes, Sir.

Mr. WILLIAMS: In view of the misrepresentations made of the Foreign Secretary and His Majesty's Government in Germany as a result of the book written by the Foreign Secretary, will steps be taken to make known in Germany the real attitude of the Government?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL NAVY.

DOCKYARDS (CIVILIAN WORKPEOPLE).

Mr. KELLY: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty the number

of civilians employed by the Admiralty in the home dockyards in October, 1933, 1934, and 1935?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Lord Stanley): The numbers of civilian workpeople borne on the books of the home dockyards on 1st October, 1933, 1934, and 1935, were 35,259, 36,637, and 38,073 respectively. Corresponding figures for salaried and office staffs are not available for 1st October in these years, but the numbers of such staff on 1st April, 1933, 1934, and 1935, were 3,182, 3,219, and 3,310 respectively.

Mr. KELLY: Is there any intention to increase these staffs during the next few months?

Lord STANLEY: I will make a statement on that subject when the Navy Estimates are submitted.

WIRELESS BROADCAST PROGRAMMES.

Mr. DAY: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty what facilities are given to the Navy while at sea to listen in to wireless broadcast programmes; how many of the ships in the Navy are fitted up with wireless receiving sets with loud-speakers which can be used by the lower ratings; and whether the usual licence fee is paid for the use of the same?

Lord STANLEY: There are no special facilities prescribed by Admiralty instruction for the reception of wireless broadcast programmes in His Majesty's ships at sea, the matter being regarded as one for the discretion of commanding officers of His Majesty's ships. In the circumstances there is no information in the Admiralty on the facilities provided, nor on the categories of personnel for whom such facilities, if any, are available in each ship. I understand that the ordinary Post Office receiving licence is issued on application and payment of the usual fee.

Mr. DAY: Is it not possible for the noble Lord to say how many ships have been fitted?

Lord STANLEY: No, Sir.

Mr. MESSER: Is it not the view of the Government that it is for the benefit of the nation not to listen in to the present broadcasting programmes?

SHIPBUILDING AND REPAIR WORK (LEITH).

Mr. MATHERS: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether the claims of the port of Leith will be favourably considered when Admiralty orders are being placed, keeping in mind that Leith, taken apart from Edinburgh, is one of the most distressed places in the country?

Lord STANLEY: Firms in the Leith area are given every opportunity of tendering to the Admiralty for shipbuilding and repair work within their capacity, and any tenders submitted will receive full consideration.

Viscountess ASTOR: Is it not a new policy for the Labour party to ask for private enterprise to do the work of the National Government?

ROSYTH AND PORT EDGAR.

Mr. MATHERS: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty what are the prospects of the active use by his Department of the naval base at Rosyth and of Port Edgar, Firth of Forth?

Lord STANLEY: The question of making greater use of the facilities at Rosyth and Port Edgar is constantly borne in mind, and it will continue to receive attention whenever new naval developments are under consideration. But I cannot at present give the hon. Member any hopes of a change in the existing policy by which Rosyth Dockyard is maintained in a condition of care and maintenance.

Mr. MATHERS: Will the Minister bear in mind and try to remove the reproach that the closing down of Rosyth was due to the lack of social amenities in that area, and as was said at the time, to petticoat government?

Viscountess ASTOR: Is it not true that it was entirely due to the Government's desire for disarmament?

Oral Answers to Questions — DISARMAMENT.

Mr. GARRO-JONES: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether he can make any statement in regard to the progress of the naval disarmament negotiations now proceeding?

Lord STANLEY: All the information that can usefully be made public is given in the daily communiqué, and it is not desirable, in the interests of the Conference, to give any more information at the present time.

Mr. GARRO-JONES: Is it the intention of the Government to table some specific proposals for consideration, as up till now there have been no specific proposals?

Lord STANLEY: I do not think that is quite correct.

Oral Answers to Questions — PALESTINE.

ANTI-BRITISH PROPAGANDA.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether any action has yet been taken in Palestine to check the incitements to violence in the Arab Press and propaganda against England emanating from Italy?

Mr. MATHERS: On a point of Order. May I ask if the word "England" here means "Great Britain," and, if that is so, can we have protection against the use of the description "England" in questions when "Great Britain" is intended?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. J. H. Thomas): I can assure the right hon. Member that a close watch is kept on the vernacular Press. One Arab newspaper was recently suspended temporarily for publishing an article inciting to violence. As regards the second part of the question, His Majesty's Government have on several occasions caused representations to be made to the Italian Government on the subject of the anti-British propaganda broadcast in Arabic by the radio station at Bari. There has lately been an improvement in the tone of such broadcasts.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Apart from broadcasting, has the right hon. Gentleman seen the leading Arab newspapers, and is he aware that, without the slightest interference from the Palestinian Government they are now publishing this:
We are all now determined to fight England, because England is the source of trouble everywhere. She is a past master—

HON. MEMBERS: Order.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: May I ask if that is not being published with impunity, and that it is regarded as innocuous by the Palestinian Government?

Mr. THOMAS: I will make enquiries on that point.

Captain PETER MACDONALD: When is the new broadcasting station which is being erected in Palestine going to be completed?

Mr. THOMAS: I do not know.

BRITISH POLICE.

Lord APSLEY: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in respect of the recent epidemic of enteric fever among the British police stationed at Jerusalem, any arrangements have been made for the convalescence of members of this force; and, if not, whether he would be willing to consider the provision of such?

Mr. THOMAS: There has been no epidemic of enteric in the British section of the Palestine police at Jerusalem or elsewhere. Only six cases have occurred this year, of which four have been discharged from hospital completely cured. The two others are progressing satisfactorily.

Lord APSLEY: Are not all the members of the service inoculated against typhoid and paratyphoid?

Mr. THOMAS: I should like to have notice of that question; I cannot say offhand.

Oral Answers to Questions — CYPRUS.

Mr. HOPKIN: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is now prepared to introduce a juvenile offenders law in Cyprus; and, if so, from what date does he propose that it should be effective?

Mr. THOMAS: Yes, Sir. I am pleased to inform the hon. Member that the Governor of Cyprus has been authorised to proceed with the enactment of a juvenile offenders law. I cannot say how soon its enactment will be possible, but I am asking the Governor for information on the subject.

Oral Answers to Questions — FIJI.

Mr. BANFIELD: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to the municipal referendum at Suva on the question of abolishing the electoral principle and substituting nomination in the appointment of the legislative council; and whether, as 80 per cent. of the voters opposed the suggested alteration in the constitution, he will consult the European and Indian populations of Fiji, either by a referendum or by a general election, before acceding to the request made in the legislative council for such an alteration?

Mr. THOMAS: I can only assume that the hon. Member is confusing two distinct matters. I am not aware of any referendum having taken place with regard to appointments to the Fiji Legislative Council. During October last a referendum was conducted by the Mayor of Suva concerning certain changes affecting the Municipal Council which had been enacted by Ordinance of the Legislative Council. The question was again raised in the Legislative Council during November, when a motion for postponing the operation of the Ordinance was rejected.

Mr. MORGAN JONES: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the chief justice of Fiji, who is at present on leave in this country, has had his attention directed to the circumstances under which certain civil proceedings against the chief justice were settled out of court; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?

Mr. THOMAS: I am in communication with the Governor of Fiji on the matter, but I am not in a position to make a further statement.

Mr. JONES: Will the right hon. Gentleman examine the papers which I am prepared to show him in relation to this case?

Mr. THOMAS: I am doing so now.

Oral Answers to Questions — TANGANYIKA.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: asked the Prime Minister whether he can give an assurance that neither Tanganyika nor any other British Colony will be transferred from British sovereignty, save with


the consent of all classes, creeds, and races, within the territory primarily affected?

The PRIME MINISTER: The right hon. Gentleman can hardly expect me to give such a categorical assurance in reply to such a purely hypothetical question. I can, however, assure the right hon. Member that no British territory and no territory under British protection or mandate would be transferred from British sovereignty or authority without the fullest regard being had to the interests of all sections of the population in the territory concerned.

Mr. COCKS: Will that apply to Abyssinia?

The PRIME MINISTER: That is not in the programme that I know of.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Does that apply to the Protectorates of South Africa?

The PRIME MINISTER: I think the answer is entirely comprehensive.

Oral Answers to Questions — KENYA.

Mr. E. J. WILLIAMS: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the special concessions in the way of rents made to Kenya farmers in the pastoral areas of Laikipia and North Nyeri which had suffered from drought, locust infestation, and the general fall in prices; whether native producers have suffered from, the same causes; and whether their taxation has been waived?

Mr. THOMAS: I have not received any information as to special concessions made to European farmers in the areas mentioned, though I am aware that they have suffered severely from drought and the other causes mentioned. The native population throughout Kenya has also, of course, suffered from the same causes, and, where necessary, taxation is reduced.

Oral Answers to Questions — TEL-AVIV (ARMS SMUGGLING).

Mr. RALPH BEAUMONT: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is yet in a position to make a statement with regard to the recent smuggling of arms into Tel-Aviv?

Mr. THOMAS: No, Sir. The whole question of the smuggling of arms is still being investigated.

Oral Answers to Questions — AVIATION.

LONG JOURNEYS (REGULATIONS).

Mr. DAY: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether, in view of the recent loss of civil aeroplanes when undertaking long journeys, he will consider the introduction of Regulations that will compel all aviators before taking off from any British airport or possession to declare their precise route; and will he also consider making it compulsory for all British aeroplanes travelling long distances to carry wireless equipment?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Sir Philip Sassoon): I sympathise with the objects the hon. Member has in view, but it would not be practicable to make Regulations on the lines he suggests.

Mr. DAY: Have not these regulations already been put into force by the permission of the Royal Air Force by the Director of Civil Aviation at Singapore?

Sir P. SASSOON: I should like to see that question on the Paper.

PRIVATE OWNERS.

Lord APSLEY: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air the number of private owners flying their own machines more than 50 hours during the course of 1935, and the comparative number in 1928?

Sir P. SASSOON: I regret that the information desired by my Noble Friend is not available.

Lord APSLEY: Is it not the case that every owner pilot has to send in his log book complete with every hour's flight and fill up an enormous number of complicated forms before he can get a new licence, and surely that information is in the Ministry?

Sir P. SASSOON: One would have to collect all private owners' log books to get the required information. This is not done.

ICE FORMATION.

Mr. GARRO-JONES: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether


he will indicate generally what progress is being made with the researches into the causes and prevention of ice formation on wing-surfaces?

Sir P. SASSOON: The conditions which govern the formation of ice on wingsurfaces are now well understood. A chemical method for preventing it has been evolved at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, and is now being developed. Some mechanical devices for dislodging ice are on the market.

AUSTRALIA (DH 86 TYPE).

Mr. SIMMONDS: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he can make any statement on the withdrawal of the certificates of airworthiness of the DH 86 type of aircraft by the Australian Government?

Sir P. SASSOON: Reports of the suspension, and later of the withdrawal of the suspension, of certificates of airworthiness in respect of this type have been received from Australia. I have, however, no fuller information than has appeared in the Press. It appears that there was no question of structural defects or failure.

Mr. SIMMONDS: In view of the difficulties that have arisen with this type of aircraft in Australia, and in view of the immense experience possessed by my right hon. Friend's accidents department, will he consider suggesting to the Australian Government the loan of an officer from that department to make investigations?

Sir P. SASSOON: No, Sir; any suggestion of that kind would, of course, have to come from the Australian Government.

SABENA AIR LINER (ACCIDENT).

Mr. SIMMONDS: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he can make any statement on the recent loss of the Sabena air liner in Surrey?

Sir P. SASSOON: The circumstances of this accident are under investigation by the Inspector of Accidents, in conjunction with the Belgian authorities. Until his report is available, there is nothing that I can add to the information that has appeared in the Press.

Mr. SIMMONDS: Will my right hon. Friend especially bear in mind the possibility of this aircraft having been

weighted down by ice forming on the wings, and will he consider whether it is not in the public interest that we should prevent the flight of aircraft without specific accessories to prevent the formation of ice when the meteorological conditions render such formation possible?

Sir P. SASSOON: I think that we must wait for the report on the accident.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE.

NEW AERODROME SITES.

Lord APSLEY: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he can give a list of new sites for aerodromes purchased this year by His Majesty's Government, giving the price per acre paid in each case, and a similar list of sites proposed to be purchased next year?

Sir P. SASSOON: It would not be in the public interest to disclose the prices paid per acre, but, if my Noble Friend desires, I will send him a list of the sites that have been acquired. I am not in a position to furnish a complete list of the purchases which will be necessary next year.

Mr. MORGAN JONES: Are the prices of these sites fixed in consultation with the Treasury land valuation officer?

Sir P. SASSOON: Yes, Sir. We consult them before we open negotiations.

AERODROMES (SOUTH LANCASHIRE).

Mr. CHORLTON: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether in view of the large industrial area in South Lancashire and the problem of its defence he will arrange for some aerodromes to be set up near by in that county?

Sir P. SASSOON: One of the three additional Auxiliary Air Force Squadrons for which provision is made in the present expansion scheme will be formed in West Lancashire.

Mr. THURTLE: Is it not a fact that there is no effective defence against air attack except by attack?

Sir P. SASSOON: I do not think that that subject comes within this question.

Mr. CHORLTON: Is that the only aerodrome there is to be in this area?

Sir P. SASSOON: It is the only new aerodrome at present this year.

Mr. C. S. TAYLOR: Would it be possible for every Member of the House to be furnished with a list of the aerodromes that are contemplated throughout the country?

Sir P. SASSOON: The hon. Member might perhaps wait for next year's Estimates.

HEAVY OIL ENGINES.

Mr. CHORLTON: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air what progress in the use of aero-engines using heavy oil as a fuel, with its increased security against fire arising from an accident, has taken place in the Royal Air Force and in civil work?

Sir P. SASSOON: Several types of compression ignition engine are available for use in civil aircraft. There is no present intention of adopting them in military aircraft in service as no types as yet existing can give the same performance as petrol engines. Research is continuously proceeding in regard to other types of compression ignition engines.

Mr. CHORLTON: Are there no engines in the service, either military or civil, of this type?

Sir P. SASSOON: We are experimenting with this type of engine.

FIRST-LINE AIRCRAFT.

Mr. EDE: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air the total number of first-line aircraft in Great Britain, France, and Germany, respectively, in May, 1935, when the two-years' expansion scheme was announced; and what are the figures to-day?

Sir P. SASSOON: The present establishment of first-line aircraft of the Royal Air Force is about 1,180 aircraft, as against 1,015 in May, 1935. As regards the former figure, some units are in course of formation and are therefore not up to full strength. No official up-to-date figures are available in respect of France or Germany. As regards the subject matter of this question, I would refer the hon. Member to the speech delivered in the Debate on 22nd July last by my Noble Friend, where he pointed out the un-wisdom of drawing conclusions from comparative figures of first-line strength made at any particular moment.

Mr. MONTAGUE: Can the right hon. Gentleman without notice indicate to some extent the relation between first-line strength and the several kinds of reserve strengths in the respective countries?

Sir P. SASSOON: No, Sir, not without notice.

ACCIDENTS.

Mr. THURTLE: asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air how many deaths have taken place as a result of flying accidents in the Royal Air Force for the 10 months ended November, 1935; and the number for the corresponding period of last year?

Sir P. SASSOON: The numbers of deaths resulting from flying accidents in the Royal Air Force during the 10 months ended 1st November in 1934 and 1935 were 28 and 37 respectively. The latter figure includes nine deaths in one accident to a flying boat. The hon. Member will appreciate that the hours flown in 1935 have been appreciably higher than in 1934.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT.

MOTOR VEHICLE HEADLIGHTS.

Mr. DAY: asked the Minister of Transport whether he has yet decided to make regulations for the purpose of regulating the use of powerful headlights on motor vehicles; and will he make a statement as to the form of these regulations?

The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Mr. Hore-Belisha): The comments of various representative bodies upon the draft regulations which were circulated earlier in the year are now before me, and I will announce the course which I intend to pursue as soon as they have been considered.

Mr. DAY: Can the Minister say whether any very considerable number of accidents were caused during last year by these glaring headlights?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I could not say that, but I have given the hon. Member an answer to his question.

Mr. THORNE: Does the right hon. Gentleman think there is any need at all for extraordinarily powerful headlights?

Mr. MAGNAY: Is not the only way of curing this defect to prolong the light of day?

PROPOSED EVERTON TUNNEL.

Mr. KIRBY: asked the Minister of Transport whether he can now give financial assistance to the corporation of Liverpool in the matter of the construction of the proposed Everton tunnel?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. Logan) on 12th December, of which I am sending him a copy.

Mr. KIRBY: asked the Minister of Transport whether the Government, during the past 12 months, ever approved of the Everton tunnel scheme for grant on a scale sufficient to cover the full cost of the proposed tunnels, etc.?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: The position is as stated in the answer given on 12th December to the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. Logan) of which I am sending the hon. Gentleman a copy.

Mr. KIRBY: In view of the reply, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that in Liverpool on 5th November a public statement was made to the effect that he had approved this scheme, and that a grant to the tune of 100 per cent. would be made by the Department? Would the right hon. Gentleman like me to give him quotations from the press in regard to it?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: The statement to which the hon. Member refers is not a statement made by me or any other person authorised to do so.

Mr. BROCKLEBANK: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that statement has been denied in the Liverpool press?

Mr. LOGAN: In view of the press correspondence, may I take it from the Minister that as far as his Department is concerned there has never been any promise to give a grant for the tunnel?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: The position is exactly as stated in the answer to which I refer on 12th December—exactly that.

PROPOSED BRIDGE, SELBY.

Colonel ROPNER: asked the Minister of Transport whether he has any information with regard to the progress of the negotiations which are being carried on between the Ministry of Transport and the county councils of the West and East Ridings of Yorkshire in connection with the construction of a new bridge at Selby?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I understand that the county councils are now considering the report of the consulting engineers; their conclusions have not yet been communicated to me.

BUILT-UP AREA (DEFINITION).

Mr. GLEDHILL: asked the Minister of Transport whether, in view of the fact that many suitable roads are not yet derestricted, he will introduce legislation to amend the definition of a built-up area?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of TRANSPORT (Captain Austin Hudson): On the contrary many expressions of approval of the manner in which this inevitably contentious and complicated task has been and is being discharged continue to reach me.

BRIDGES (CARMARTHEN).

Mr. HOPKIN: asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware that in the county of Carmarthen there are ten weak bridges on Class A roads, and six on Class B roads; and what steps he proposes to take to strengthen these bridges?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: There are 21 weak or inadequate bridges in the Carmarthen County Council priority list, and all of these have been approved by me for reconstruction in the five-year programme. Indeed reconstruction has already been completed in the case of three, work is in progress on two others, and in eight other cases reconstruction has been approved for commencement during the current financial year.

Mr. HOPKIN: asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware that complaint has been made at a meeting of the Carmarthenshire County Council of the delay in the erection of the Carmarthen bridge; and what he proposes to do to bring this delay to an end?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I have no official knowledge of the proceedings at the Carmarthenshire County Council's meeting, but so far as I am concerned I have already agreed a grant to this work.

Mr. HOPKIN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there has been six years' discussion and that not a single brick of this bridge has been laid even now?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I am extremely sorry to hear it, but I have discharged my part of the matter by giving a grant.

HORSE TRANSPORT (RESTRICTIONS).

Mr. TURTON: asked the Minister of Transport under what statutory authority he proposes to limit the use of horse transport in British towns other than London; and whether, in view of the anxiety caused by the prospect that horse transport is to be discouraged in the principal provincial cities, he will take an early opportunity of clarifying his policy in this direction?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: While I cannot admit the assumptions contained in my hon. Friend's question, the relevant statutory authority is contained in Section 46 of the Road Traffic Act, 1930, as amended by Section 29 of the Road and Rail Traffic Act, 1933, which empowers highway authorities to take action subject to the confirmation of the Minister. A statement of my policy in this matter will be found in the answer which gave on 5th December to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ayr Burghs (Lieut.-Colonel Moore), of which I am sending my hon. Friend a copy.

Mr. TURTON: Are we to understand that what the Minister told us last July, that he proposed, with modifications, to stop the use of horse traffic on the roads in five years, is not correct?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: What I said last July and what I said in December are exactly the same. If my hon. Friend will read what I said, he will find a complete statement of my policy.

FIVE-YEAR ROAD PLAN.

Sir HUGH SEELY: asked the Minister of Transport whether the £100,000,000 promised by the Government for road improvement and construction

spread over five years is in addition to the ordinary grants made to road authorities and is all extra money?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave yesterday to a question by the hon. Member for Newport (Mr. Clarry), of which I am sending him a copy.

MOTOR TRAFFIC (ASAUN'S HILL AND WILLIFIELD WAY).

Mr. G. HARDIE: asked the Minister of Transport whether, in view of the ever-increasing danger from motor traffic at the junction of Asmun's Hill and Willifield Way, N. W.11, he proposes to give some protection to foot passengers?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: A recent "spot check" count showed that the vehicular traffic through the junction was less than 50 vehicles per hour, while pedestrians numbered about 80 per hour. If the hon. Gentleman has any further particulars regarding this junction, I shall be very glad to have them.

Mr. HARDIE: I understood that that report had been math, but what has not been reported is that there is a school near, and there is danger at the times when the children are going into or coming out of the school, because a great many of the mothers take the children to school an I meet them in the afternoon. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that is something which does not demand attention, I disagree. What percentage of accidents shall we have to have here before we can get some attention given to the matter?

Mr. HORE BELISHA: I wish to be as sympathetic as possible to the hon. Member, and if he will assist me in any way I shall be glad. I have shown him that the traffic is extremely sparse at this point, and if he has any suggestion to make I shall be most glad to consider it. I do not know what he has in mind.

Mr. HARDIE: A policeman in school hours.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: That is not a question for me.

Mr. HERBERT G. WILLIAMS: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many accidents there have been in this part of Glasgow?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: It is not in Glasgow.

ROAD ACCIDENTS.

Captain STRICKLAND: asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware that certain places on the main roads in London which are notorious for the number of road accidents have been kept under observation for many months past with the object of ascertaining the principal causes of such accidents, and that certain recommendations for remedial measures have been carried out; and whether he will present a statement showing the number of accidents which occurred before and after the adoption of those measures and the causes to which they were attributed?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: As a result of the intensive investigation and the special measures taken on the four roads in question, fatalities have been reduced by 53.5 per cent., serious injuries by 32.4 per cent. and slight injuries by 10.6 per cent. in the six months ended 30th September, 1935, as compared with the corresponding period of 1934. The decrease in the accidents to pedestrians is even more striking, the fatalities having decreased by 75 per cent. and serious injuries by 46.3 per cent. It is noteworthy that the accidents due to vehicles, other than pedal cycles, show a reduction of 33.3 per cent. whilst the accidents due to pedal cycles are increased by 39.5 per cent. In view of the encouraging results which followed this special investigation, and the measures taken, I have arranged for further investigations to be made of other selected roads which have a bad accident record.

Captain STRICKLAND: While thanking the Minister for his reply, may I ask whether he will still consider the issue of a statement on the causation of accidents, in view of the importance of the utmost publicity being given to this matter in order to guide public opinion as to the real cause of accidents?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Yes, Sir. One such statement was issued, and a further one covering the investigations during the whole year will be issued as soon as possible after the end of the year.

Mr. ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: asked the Minister of Transport whether there

are any cross-roads or corners in Lanarkshire at which two or more fatal accidents have occurred during the past year; and, if so, whether steps have been taken in every case to reduce the danger at these spots.

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I have received no reports on fatal accidents at cross roads and corners in Lanarkshire during the past year; two non-fatal accidents at junctions and one at a corner have been reported; in each case the highway authority has taken action to improve road and traffic conditions.

Mr. LIDDALL: asked the Minister of Transport what has been the percentage reduction of pedestrians killed in London since the institution of a system of pedestrian crossings?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: During the nine months ended 30th September, 1935, the number of pedestrians killed in the City and Metropolitan Police Districts was 21.5 per cent. less than during the corresponding months of 1934, when a complete scheme of pedestrian crossings had not been provided.

Mr. LIDDALL: asked the Minister of Transport the number of persons killed and injured in road accidents in Great Britain during comparable periods of 1934 and 1935?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: During the 39 weeks ended 8th December, 1934, 5,584 persons were killed and 184,312 persons injured on the roads in Great Britain. During the same period of 1935 the number of persons killed was 4,885, a reduction of 699 or 12.5 per cent. and the number of persons injured was 174,077, a reduction of 10,235 or 5.6 per cent.

Mr. THURTLE: Has the Minister any reason to believe that large numbers of the population have been frightened off the roads?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I have not observed it.

Mr. DUNCAN: What was the increase in the number of vehicles licensed during the same time?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Between 150,000 and 250,000.

Mr. LEVY: Does the Minister contemplate framing the regulations so that a


certificate of efficiency shall accompany an application for licence for these motor machines, in order to avoid accidents?

PEDESTRIAN CROSSING-PLACES.

Mr. GLEDHILL: asked the Minister of Transport whether, in view of the prevailing uncertainty, he will issue clearer instructions with regard to pedestrian crossings, so that the general public may realise the difference between the ordinary crossing and one controlled by a light signal or police constable?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: I am sorry to hear that there is prevailing uncertainty in some parts of the country, particularly as every householder in the United Kingdom has been sent a copy of the Highway Code in which the regulations appear. I can only hope that the police in particular localities where crossings have not been long established will do all they can to make them effective.

GLASGOW-STIRLING ROAD.

Mr. ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: asked the Minister of Transport whether he proposes to assist any large-scale improvement in the main Glasgow-Stirling road?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Under the five-year programme, the county council of Dunbarton have submitted a scheme for improving the Glasgow-Stirling road in the county, but the proposals are not yet sufficiently advanced for me to be able to make any statement on the subject of grant. I understand that similar proposals dealing with the sections of the road in the counties of Lanark and Stirling may be submitted, but they have not yet reached me.

OMNIBUS SERVICE, HARRINGAY.

Mr. MESSER: asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware of the inadequacy of the No. 21 omnibus service from Harringay to the City in the rush hours of the morning; and will he consider taking steps to improve the service, in view of the inconvenience caused by the present state of congestion?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: There is a tram as well as an omnibus service between Harringay and the City during the peak hours, and the London Passenger Transport Board advise me that the two services, taken together, provide

adequate accommodation between these points. I do not control the services operated by the board.

Mr. MESSER: Will the Minister snake further investigations in the light of the statement I make that I live in the district and am subject to the inconvenience referred to in the question?

Mr. HORE-BELISHA: While I am at all times ready to assist the hon. Member or any other hon. Member, I have no authority in this matter. I can really act only as a channel of communication, and I am ready to do so.

Mr. MESSER: May I ask the Minister to be that channel of communication in this instance?

Mr. MONTAGUE: While the Minister is considering the question, will he take account of the fact that in this area the railway service is as scandalously inadequate, especially at some periods of the day?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL PARKS AND BROMPTON CEMETERY (EMPLOYES).

Mr. W. ASTOR: asked the First Commissioner of Works whether be will indicate the reasons why the rates of wages and the conditions of employment of the Department's industrial staff employed in the Royal Parks and in Brompton Cemetery are considerably less favourable than those enjoyed by men employed on similar work under the Metropolitan Borough Councils; and whether he will consider making some improvement in those rates and conditions?

The FIRST COMMISSIONER of WORKS (Mr. Ormsby-Gore): The rates of pay at present obtained in the Royal Parks were laid down by the Industrial Court in June, 1931, and those at Brompton Cemetery were modified later in the light of that award. I am not aware that there has been any change of circumstances since then which would warrant an improvement in these rates. The policy of my Department, following that adopted by successive Governments, is to pay the rates generally paid by good employers for comparable work in the same area. I am circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT the present rates of pay in the Royal Parks and Brompton Cemetery.

Mr. THORNE: Does this question only apply to the grave diggers in the cemetery?

Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: No. I understand that at Brompton Cemetery the ordinary labourers receive 49s. 10d. and assistant propagators 52s. 11d. and grave diggers and stone removers 55s. 9d.

Following are the particulars:

The present rates of pay in the Royal Parks and Brompton Cemetery are as follow:


—
London.
Outer London.



Per week.
Per week


Royal Parks.
s.
d.
s.
d.


Labourers
49
10
46
9


Leading Men
52
11
49
10


Propagators—






Hyde Park
70
3
—


Regent's Park
65
6
—


Hampton Court
—
65
6


Assistant Propagators
52
11
49
10


Artificers
52
11
49
10



to
to



61
5
59
0


Brompton Cemetery.






Labourers
49
10




Assistant Propagator
52
11




Grave Diggers and Stone Removers.
55
9

Oral Answers to Questions — GAMAGES (WEST END), LIMITED.

Mr. LESLIE: asked the President of the Board of Trade the present position of the estate of Gamages (West End), Limited; what sum has been paid to the ground landlord of the premises; and what sum has been available to the remainder of the creditors?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Dr. Burgin): The liquidation is practically completed. The Receiver for the debenture holder was unable to obtain a sufficient offer for the premises to enable him to discharge the claim of the first mortgagee, the ground landlord, which was for 2300,000 and interest, and by leave of the court abandoned the premises to him. The claims of the preferential creditors, to the amount of some £14,000, have been satisfied in full. The Receiver has not, however, been able to satisfy the claim of the debenture holder in full and therefore nothing has become available for the ordinary creditors.

Mr. LESLIE: May I ask whether the preferential creditors includes the staff, and whether the staff have received their salaries in full?

Dr. BURGIN: Perhaps the hon. Member will put that question down.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRAZIL (BRITISH INVESTORS).

Sir NICHOLAS GRATTAN - DOYLE: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will inquire about the proposal, made on 8th October in the Brazilian Legislative Chamber, to aggravate the default imposed by the Brazilian Government upon British investors by substituting interest-bearing paper for the already reduced cash remittances; and will he examine means for setting up customs duties on Brazilian products imported into the United Kingdom competing with Dominion products until the Brazilian authorities discontinue ill-treatment of British savings?

Captain EUAN WALLACE (Secretary Department of Overseas Trade): I have no information about the proposal referred to by my hon. Friend, but I will make inquiry.

Oral Answers to Questions — MERCANTILE. MARINE (EMPIRE SERVICES).

Sir PERCY HURD: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the fact that the Canadian-Australasian steamship service can no longer be continued because of the competition of subsidised United States lines and the inequitable coastwise legislation of foreign countries; and whether the future of Pacific steamship services of the British Empire will be considered by the Imperial Shipping Committee as an urgent matter calling for co-operative efforts between the Dominions and this country?

Dr. BURGIN: I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer which my right hon. Friend gave yesterday to questions on this subject by the hon. Members for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) and Sunderland (Mr. Storey).

Mr. GARRO-JONES: Has the Minister's attention been drawn to a statement by the Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand to the effect that he is


prepared to co-operate, subject to satisfactory labour conditions, in State measures to save these Services, and will the Minister communicate and co-operate with the Governments of Australia and New Zealand?

Dr. BURGIN: If my hon. Friend will refer again to the answers that were given yesterday, I think he will see that this is primarily a matter for the Governments in the Dominions.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE.

TILES (IMPORT).

Colonel BALDWIN-WEBB: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether any steps are under contemplasion to restrict the import of glazed tiles and roofing tiles?

Dr. BURGIN: Any application for increased duties on these goods should be made by the interests concerned to the Import Duties Advisory Committee.

Colonel BALDWIN-WEBB: Will the Minister represent to the advisory committee that an excessive amount of unemployment exists in this industry?

Dr. BURGIN: It is entirely a matter for the industry to make its own application.

Colonel BALDWIN-WEBB: It has already made application.

Dr. BURGIN: Then, no doubt, the Committee are considering the application.

RUSSIA (LONG-TERM CREDITS).

Mr. THURTLE: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether any negotiations are proceeding, or are contemplated, between His Majesty's Government and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with regard to the provision of long-term credits for the purchase by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of goods manufactured in this country?

Captain WALLACE: No negotiations are proceeding with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics regarding the provision of long-term credits. I am not at present in a position to make any statement as regards possible future developments in the matter.

Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER: Has the Minister made any representations in the last three months?

Captain WALLACE: If the right hon. Gentleman will be good enough to look at the answer which I have given and also to the written answer to the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams), I think he will obtain further information on the subject.

BRAZIL.

Sir N. GRATTAN-DOYLE: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether in view of the continued agitation in Brazil for the repudiation of foreign obligations, and having regard to the losses of the Export Credits Guarantee Department, due to defaulted Brazilian debts, he will warn British exporters to Brazil of the dangers they run and inform them that, as imports of Brazilian products do not provide full exchange payments for British exports to Brazil, it would be safer to restrict imports from Brazil?

Captain WALLACE: I assume that the last three words of He question should read "exports to Brazil." Imports into Brazil are now paid for by the purchase of exchange on the free market, and I am informed that at present there is no undue difficulty or delay in obtaining sterling for current trade. I should, accordingly be reluctant to discourage United Kingdom exporters, who are, I think, well aware of the situation, from taking steps within the limits of ordinary commercial prudence to maintain their place in what is normally a valuable market.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND.

RIVER POLLUTION.

Mr. MATHERS: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what action he intends to take on the recommendations of the Scottish Advisory Committee on rivers pollution prevention in their report regarding the rivers Almond and Avon?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for SCOTLAND (Lieut.-Colonel Colville): The Department of Health are in communication with the local authorities concerned regarding the Committee's recommendations.

LAND DRAINAGE.

Mr. HARDIE: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what progress is being made with land drainage in Scotland; and in what districts such work is being carried out?

Lieut.-Colonel COLVILLE: As the answer is a long one I propose, with the hon. Member's consent, to circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the answer:

A scheme of arterial drainage under the Land Drainage (Scotland) Acts was carried out on the River Annan in 1934 and 1935 and the works were completed recently. A draft scheme has been prepared in respect of the River Clyde at Hyndford Bridge, and the statutory notices have been issued by the Department of Agriculture for Scotland. As the right hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Johnston) was informed in reply to a question on the 10th December, the question of proceeding with a scheme for the remedying of flooding in the Valley of the River Kelvin is at present under consideration. As regards field and hill drainage, the total area of land in Scotland improved by drainage during the period from 1921 to 1934 with the help of Government grants is approximately 73,000 acres arable and 1,320,000 pasture. The grants paid in respect of this work amounted to some £242,000. During the current financial year grants totalling £11,000 have been offered in respect of drainage of agricultural land. Applications for grants were received from all counties in Scotland except Clackmannan and West Lothian, the counties with the highest numbers of applications being Dumfries, Caithness, Inverness, Perth, Ayr, Lanark and Argyll.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE.

ALLOTMENTS.

Mr. SHORT: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he proposes to restore the financial assistance given to the unemployed in the provision of allotments, seeds, and tools; and whether he will re-appoint the central committee set up under the Utilisation Act, 1931?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Ramsbotham): During the last three

years, grants have been made from the Development Fund to the Society of Friends, to supplement funds obtained that society from private sources, for the purpose of assisting the provision of seeds, tools and fertilizers to unemployed and partly employed persons cultivating allotments. The money available up to date has, I am glad to say, been more than sufficient to meet all demands. The grants from the Development Fund are being continued this year. In these circumstances there appears to be no need for the re-appointment of the Central Allotments Committee. As regards the provision of allotments for unemployed persons, the Commissioner for the Special Areas is prepared to make grants for the purpose of assisting the local authorities in those areas to provide more allotments.

MILK MARKETING (SEPARATED MILK).

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that Messrs. Hounsdell and Loft, Hastings, distributors for over 13 years of separated milk, have had their supplies stopped through the action of the Milk Marketing Board; that no compensation has been paid for loss of trade and goodwill; that these partners are not entitled to unemployment benefit; and whether he will inquire into this and any other eases where businesses have been expropriated without compensation?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: I am aware of the case to which my hon. Friend refers. When milk is sold for manufacture under the Milk Marketing Scheme the board may allow the purchaser a rebate off the liquid selling price varying with the type of product manufactured. I am informed by the board that some manufacturers who bought whole milk at manufacturing rates sold separated milk, being a byproduct of the manufactured product, at a price higher than that paid to the board for the whole milk. The board has decided not to allow the rebate in these cases. As to the last part of the question, I would remind my hon. Friend that machinery is provided in Section 9 of the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931, for the investigation of complaints regarding the operation of marketing schemes.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that these two people have no right of appeal, that their business, which was 13½ years old, has been


destroyed by the action of the board, and that they will receive no compensation or unemployment benefit; and will he make representations to the Milk Marketing Board with a view at least to relieving people whom they throw out of work and business by their action?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: As the hon. Member knows, the function of the committee of investigation is, as I have mentioned before, to investigate cases in which complaint is made, and, if a complaint is made to my right hon. Friend, he will consider referring it to the committee of investigation.

LAND DRAINAGE ACT.

Mr. LIDDALL: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether it is his intention to introduce a Bill having for its purpose the repeal of the Land Drainage Act, 1930?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: No, Sir.

Mr. LIDDALL: Can my hon. Friend say whether the Minister would support a private Member's Bill for this purpose?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: I could not give any such undertaking.

Oral Answers to Questions — RIVER OUSE CATCHMENT BOARD.

Mr. SHORT: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that the risk of flooding in the Bentley area has not been avoided by the erection of the Thorpe Marsh barrier bank; whether he has considered the resolution passed by the Bentley Urban District Council, on 10th December, urging the Ministry of Health to hasten the execution of the larger scheme for flood prevention decided upon by the Ouse Catchment Board; and, if so, what action does he propose to take?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: As my right hon. Friend stated in his reply to the hon. Member on 12th December, the Thorpe Marsh barrier bank was designed to limit the risk of floods in the Bentley area, and the efficiency of this bank was demonstrated during the recent period of abnormal rainfall. The resolution referred to in the second part of the question was addressed to my right hon. Friend and is receiving his careful attention. As the River Ouse Catchment

Board decided on 27th November to accept the Government grant which had been offered in respect of the full scheme for the improvement of the Don and its tributaries, I have every hope that the catchment board will now proceed with the scheme as expeditiously as possible. I would, however, remind the hon. Member that work on the Lower Don has been proceeding since March, 1934.

Mr. SHORT: Have the county borough councils agreed to support the catchment board in the lager scheme, and have they withdrawn their opposition?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: I cannot say that without notice.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Is the Minister aware that the county borough council are called upon to pay £600,000 out of a total cost of £1,190,000; that they have practically agreed to hold up the scheme as long as they possibly can, and will the hon. Gentleman consult the Minister with a view to meeting the county borough councils and, if need be, slightly increasing the grant so as to get the work expedited?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: I will draw the attention of my hon. Friend to that point.

Mr. PALING: Is the Minister aware that the local authorities are convinced that the present barrier bank scheme will not stop the floods; is he further aware that the bigger scheme is being held up because one contributor refuses to pay and, in view of that, it is not likely that unless he takes power to compel something to be done nothing will be done in the next few years, and Bentley will be flooded again?

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: The banks have been tested by the recent abnormal rainfall.

Mr. PALING: The flood is not as bad as it has been recently.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL INDUSTRY.

WAGES.

Mr. H. G. WILLIAMS: asked the Secretary for Mines whether he has any statement to make in respect of the coal mines negotiations?

The SECRETARY for MINES (Captain Crookshank): The hon. Member will have seen the Press announcement which was issued last evening by agreement between the representative coalowners and representatives of the Mineworkers' Federation after their joint meeting. The offer made on behalf of the coalowners, of an increase of wages in every district as from the 1st January, was reported to me by the Executive of the Federation at a meeting I had with them this morning, and is being considered this afternoon by the Delegate Conference of the Federation. The fact that the joint meeting was held, is, I think, in itself a matter for satisfaction, as indicating some progress towards a settlement of the dispute by direct negotiations between the two sides. I do not think that it is desirable that I should say any more at the moment, except that I am seeing the miners' representatives again this evening.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that in the statement made by the mineowners no specific terms have been mentioned, and that the workpeople have not the faintest notion whether the offer is going to be 3d. a day or 3s. a day; and that, while the attitude of the mineworkers' representatives has been very restrained througout the negotiations, they are apprehensive as to what is going to take place? Have all the facts been put before the Prime Minister with regard to the very serious position?

Captain CROOKSHANK: All I can say is that I think I am perfectly well aware of all the facts from the conversations which I have had this morning; at the moment I do not think it is wise to say any more.

Later:

Mr. E. DUNN: I desire to ask the Prime Minister a question of which I have given him Private Notice—

Mr. SPEAKER: That is a question which has just been answered in reply to Question No. 94.

Mr. DUNN: May I he allowed to ask the Prime Minister, in view of the fact that a crisis—

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member's question was only put into my hands quite

late to-day, when I was not in a position to study the Order Paper sufficiently to see that there was an exactly similar question down in the name of the hon. Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. G. Williams).

Mr. T. SMITH: May I submit to you, with great respect, that the matter contained in my hon. Friend's Private Notice question is vitally different from the matter contained in the question of the hon. Member for South Croydon?

Mr. SPEAKER: It is exactly the same question as that of the hon. Member for Bother Valley (Mr. E. Dunn).

Mr. H. G. WILLIAMS: asked the Secretary for Mines whether he will inquire fully into the question whether coal transferred by collieries to subsidiary undertakings, including subsidiary selling companies, is so dealt with as to cause a reduction of the total sums brought into the ascertainments for the calculation of miners' wages?

Captain CROOKSHANK: As I have already stated in this House, I regard it as necessary to ensure that under the new central selling arrangements the collieries will be credited with the proper proceeds for the purposes of the wages ascertainments. In the case of transfers to subsidiary companies, the only price which are relevant to the wages ascertainments are the transfer prices. I am informed that the wages agreements provide that, whatever the price may be at which the colliery company actually transfers coal to allied concerns, fair transfer prices must be credited for the purposes of the wages ascertainments; that the accountants appointed by the workmens' side, acting in conjunction with the accountants appointed by the owners' side, are entitled to satisfy themselves by inspection of the colliery books that the transfer prices actually credited in the wages ascertainments are fair, or to make such adjustments as are necessary; and I am informed that such adjustments are, as a matter of fact, made from time to time in the ascertainments.

Mr. LAWSON: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman inquire why it is that the companies that own these collieries are always saying that they are in a bad way while the subsidiary undertakings are doing very well?

Mr. H. G. WILLIAMS: Do I understand from my hon. and gallant Friend's answer that the allegations customarily made on the other side of the House are without foundation?

CENTRAL SELLING ORGANISATION.

Mr. H. G. WILLIAMS: asked the Secretary for Mines when the draft order setting up the central coal-selling organisation will be published; and whether he intends to consult the representatives of the principal groups of consumers before publishing the draft Order?

Captain CROOKSHANK: I am unable to indicate a date when the draft Orders for the amendment of the schemes in force under Part I of the Coal Mines Act, 1930, to provide for central selling, will be laid before Parliament. I have been approached by representative bodies of consumers, and have suggested that they should get into touch with the colliery owners who are preparing the selling schemes. This, in my view, is the proper course to take.

Mr. WOODS: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman give us any information concerning the group of consumers whom he has consulted?

Captain CROOKSHANK: I have not consulted anyone. As I have said, I have been approached by representative bodies of consumers, and have suggested that they should deal with the coal-owners. I think that that is the proper course for them to take while these schemes are being drafted.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Mr. ATTLEE: May I ask the Prime Minister whether he has any statement to make with regard to future business?

The PRIME MINISTER: It is proposed to take the Motion for the Christmas Adjournment on Friday, and the House will meet again on Tuesday, 4th February, 1936. The business to be taken during the first week after the Recess will be as follows:
Tuesday, 4th February: Second Reading of the Cotton Spinning Industry Bill, and the Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution; Third Reading of the Unemployment Assistance (Temporary Provisions) (Extension) Bill.
Wednesday, 5th February: Private Members' Motions. The subjects to be discussed will be balloted for on the first day on which the House meets after the Recess.
Thursday, 6th February: Second Reading of the Unemployment Insurance (Agriculture) Bill, and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Friday, 7th February: Consideration of draft Orders in Council under the Government of India Act for the constitution of Sind and Orissa as separate Provinces.
On any day, if there is time, other Orders will be taken.

Mr. ATTLEE: Will provision be made for summoning the House at an earlier date if the situation, either in the mining industry or in foreign affairs, demands it?

The PRIME MINISTER: Yes, Sir. It is, as I think the right hon. Gentleman knows, common form now that the Motion for Adjournment does give that power.

Mr. ATTLEE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the text of the Unemployment Insurance (Agriculture) Bill will be available to Members?

The PRIME MINISTER: I hope that copies will be in Members' hands very early in the New Year.

Sir AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: With reference to to-morrow's Debate, will my right hon. Friend consider whether it might not be for the general convenience of the House that he should move to suspend the Eleven o'Clock Rule, not for the purpose of prolonging the Debate, but to make it quite certain that the last two speakers, particularly my right hon. Friend himself, shall not be hampered by lack of time in making the very important statement that he has to make? I suggest that he should consult with the other parties, through the usual channels, as to whether that will be for the general convenience.

The PRIME MINISTER: I am quite willing to do that.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.

That they have agreed to,—

Campbeltown Harbour, Water and Gas Order Confirmation Bill,

Dundee Corporation Order Confirmation Bill, without Amendment.

Refreshment Rooms and Lavatories,—That they concur with the Commons in their Resolution, namely: "That it is expedient that a Joint Committee of Lords and Commons be appointed to consider and report upon the accommodation for Refreshment Rooms and Lavatories in the Palace of Westminster."

EMIGRATION.

3.51 p.m.

Captain MACNAMARA: I beg to move,
That this House is of opinion that the time has arrived when immediate steps should be taken to survey possibilities for restarting migration within the Empire, and urges His Majesty's Government to set up at an early date an Empire settlement board, with a view to examining all schemes for organised settlement, and to recommend to Parliament any means which will assist the redistribution of population within the Empire.
It is with very great diffidence that I rise for the first time so early in my service in this House to address the House and to introduce a Motion. I realise that I have a very great deal to learn yet. I have realised that sometimes outside the Chamber as well as within. But now that I am on my feet and, so to speak, caught by the unerring finger of fate in the ballot, I am very glad to be speaking on the subject of emigration and drawing the attention of the Government to the resumption of emigration in the Empire, because I consider it a very vital and important subject. First of all, what is our object? We can, perhaps, produce long tirades about curing unemployment or balancing the populations in the Empire, or perhaps increasing the security of our Empire, but I prefer to put our object in more simple language. I turn to the Parable of the Talents, and all that I suggest is that our object is to develop our talents—our inheritance. What must we consider in relation to this object? First of all, we must look to the past. We must look back on that pioneer spirit, backed by capital, which went to these new lands and started building this object? First of all, we must look to the past. We must look back on that pioneer spirit, backed by capital, which went to these new lands and started building this Empire for us. We must also look to the future, and in the future we shall see numbers of hungry nations all thirsting for expansion and the development of new areas, and we have to consider very seriously now planning our own Empire to meet what may be a threat in later days. Unfortunately, as politicians we have also to think of the present. There are many statesmen in our constituencies who can always look to the future and can always look to the past, but we as politicians have also to take into consideration the factors affecting the attainment of the object to-day, and I propose to talk for a moment on them,

although all the time we want to bear in mind this building for the future.
The first factor affecting the attainment of this object is that we have in power, only recently elected, a National Government from which the country and the Empire expect a very great deal of progressive and future planning. We have also an Opposition which I consider to be just as sincerely desirous of bringing together the unemployed people in this country and the resources in other countries and giving the two a chance to work hand in hand for the uplift of the people concerned, and for the abolition of poverty. So I think we can all work together, and I implore that in a matter such as this we should try to work in a non-party spirit. What are the other factors? First of all, there are vast areas in the Empire and vast resources so far untapped. There is also, apparently, in England a great deal of capital which can be borrowed at very low rates of interest and used for development purposes. There are also numbers of idle men and others who, although not idle, are not on the standard of living that we should like to see. To be perfectly fair, we must also remember that the same applies to the Dominions, that in the Dominions there are also numbers of people idle and people who are poor and people who are seeking some form of outlet for their energies. Are the Dominions, then, going to accept a new burden put on them? That is what we have to ask, and that is what we have to get over. We hear much of overproduction, but I do not think any of us has the right to say that there is any over-production in the world while there is under-consumption. It is a question of bringing the capital, the men and the resources together and giving a chance for savings to earn wealth. We must not live on capital, but the savings of capital must be used to earn wealth.
There is another factor affecting the situation. What do foreign countries think? I was quite recently in Berlin. I was speaking at a dinner, and I had thrown at me a gibe which I very often get. I had it last summer in Budapest and Prague. "Here you are, you Britons. You have this idle money, these idle men, and all these resources. You do not do anything about them, and at the same time you stop us from doing


anything about them." That is a very hard question to face frankly, sitting among a number of German business men. I think it is very necessary that we should do something about it, otherwise we shall find that these foreigners will be demanding that they be given a chance. At this moment I understand that there is a Swiss delegation in Canada. I also understand that there are more people from foreign countries going to our Dominions than Britons. I know a certain German nobleman who is in London to-day trying to organise a scheme for German emigration to Australia, and gaining a certain amount of money from garrulous ladies in Kensington and others. The final factor affecting the situation is that, whatever development we may have in view, it is going to take some time to prepare; and that is the object of my Motion—that the Government should get down to some scheme that will pave the way for future development of the Dominions.
The next question is, what are the courses open to us? The first course is to do nothing and to hope for better times. At the very best that will be haphazard and slow and not likely to be a success. The second course is to revive the old emigration schemes. No, we do not want to do that. They did not prove a success in the past. So often one has heard of taking penniless boys and girls out of the poorer districts of England, giving them their fare to the Dominions and telling them to make good. It is quite understandable that the Dominions themselves are not willing to take people who in this country would be a burden and are more likely to do well in a new country. The third course open is to stimulate the voluntary organisations that are in existence. Certainly, by all means; and I hope that the Government will give some assistance and encouragement to the voluntary organisations that are working so hard and are so handicapped to-day.
The fourth course is to plan, to make a programme of development which could be modified to suit each Dominion or each circumstance, a programme that is elastic, so that even if to-day we cannot have a wholesale invasion we may at least be able to send out our reconnaissance patrols. It would be unfair to

seek to appreciate the situation without producing some form of plan. I do not propose to produce a plan in detail this afternoon. I propose to throw out a few lines of thought, and to show that there is a prima facie case for the Government to set up what I am asking for, that is a board that will cc-ordinate, examine and plan schemes. The first we must turn to are the children. The Fairbridge Farm Schools have proved a very great success. We might extend that scheme. One of the saddest types to be seen in London or any other city to-day is the young orphan, boy or girl, who is suitable only for a child's job and is unable to keep himself; the boy who, if he had a home, would be able to help the family budget but is not able to earn enough to keep himself properly in a town. The Government might consider transferring a good many of our young orphans and giving them a chance in schools from the very earliest days in new lands. There is also a great deal to be said for encouraging soldier settlers, for giving soldiers or sailors or airmen who leave the Service a chance of settling in the new Dominions. There is also a possibility of collecting those men in the Service who are desirous of eventually settling in a Dominion—collecting them so that they may serve the last two years in battalions in the Dominions, at the same time possibly giving them a chance to develop their new homes.
Those are all lines of thought. But the great line of thought I want to come to is the one which I know is the most acceptable to the Dominions themselves. That is that we transfer balanced communities, people backed with capital, who know each other and are willing and desirous to people a new area as a colony in itself. Between the years 1920 and 1932 the British Government spent £200,000,000 on unemployment schemes, but those schemes were only palliatives and only temporary, and we still have the unemployed with us. For £200,000,000 we could emigrate 200,000 settlers, and if each settler had a wife and two children that would mean 800,000 souls. Why could we not raise money at a cheap rate of interest and spend the equivalent of what was spent between 1920 and 1932 on unemployment at home, in giving people a real chance in countries which can keep them? The interest on such a loan would be more than repaid to


the taxpayers in England by the saving on unemployment, housing, schooling, etc. For any such scheme, however, and for any of the other schemes, we must have a system of training in this country before emigrants go abroad. The people must not only be trained but they must live under even harder conditions at home than those under which they would be expected to live in the Dominions. It is no good sending out soft people. They must be given a hard training, and they must realise that a spartan existence is called for from the start.
I ask the Government to set up an Empire Development Board that will co-ordinate these schemes, examine future proposals and prepare some planned programme, so that as the years go by we may carry on with an Empire policy instead of drifting and hoping for the best. We have to think of yet one more point and it is this: The waters of Europe may be ruffled to-day. It is quite possible that the waters of the Empire may be subject to a tidal bore during the next year, and that it may seriously shake our foundations. I am certain that in the next four to six years the waters of this world are going to stiffer such a storm that it would be as well for us and our Empire to start consolidating our anchorage now. That is why I rise to-day and ask the House to support me in this object of developing our talents in the Empire.

4.9 p.m.

Brigadier-General Sir HENRY CROFT: I beg to second the Motion.
As one of the oldest Members of the House, I regard it as a great privilege to be permitted to second this Motion. I am sure that the House will permit me to offer my own and its congratulations to the hon. and gallant Member on his maiden speech, which showed much study of the question, and to congratulate him also on the manner and the matter of his speech. Chelmsford should be very proud of its representative. We all appreciate that it is early in the new Parliament for the hon. and gallant Member to be called upon to rise and deal with such a subject. We congratulate him on the way in which he has dealt with it. The hon. and gallant Member's speech is a refutation of the argument so widely used that youth is callous or indifferent to the obligations of Empire. Anyone in this House who

looks round the world to-day will admit that the principal hope for our race lies in the greater development and the greater populating of the Empire overseas.
Trade is so closely linked up with this question of population that I would remind the House of the movement of trade in the Empire since the Ottawa Agreement. It is really very heartening to those who are looking for the salvation of our workers in the matter of employment. I would call the attention of the House to the fact that last year, for the first time in our histoy, our kinsmen in the Empire overseas and the various associated countries in the Empire gave more employment to our industrialists than all the foreign world put together. What I think is even more striking and a more dramatic landmark in our Empire history is the fact that in October of this year the British Empire overseas purchased a greater total of our exports than all the 1,200,000,000 dwellers in foreign lands. Those are very striking facts. No wonder that many idealists at the moment are somewhat disheartened because some of the greatest Powers in the world are unable to show a corporate spirit of sacrifice in trying to help the world along the road which we would all desire to travel, the road of true peace and understanding; and no wonder that youth is turning ever more hopefully to the countries under the British flag and to all the nations within the British system as a possible spiritual union and a union where fraternal aid is making progress, and is hoping for guidance along the path which will lead the world through unity to the goal of peace.
It will be remembered by many that two years ago a Resolution was tabled in the House urging the Government to take the earliest possible opportunity of communicating with the Dominions overseas with a view to surveying possibilities for restarting the flow of migration. One is entitled to remind the House that that was a record Resolution. Actually a considerable majority of the Members of the House attached their names to it, and some 20 or 30 others afterwards indicated that it had their support. Personally I regret that the Government at that time were so concerned with other great and vital affairs, as we must admit they were, that a day was not possible for the discussion of this


great question, and much less was any action possible. We were told to await the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on this subject. Although we realised the amount of labour given by that committee to its task, everyone who has studied that report must come to the conclusion that it was pessimistic in its outlook, and indeed almost defeatist, in that it could give us no constructive hope of action to be taken.
It is not my intention to repeat the arguments which I have used before in this House in support of the proposals of the Empire Settlement and Development Research Committee, except to restate the grave fact which I think ought always to be present in our minds, namely, that if migration from this country had proceeded since the War at the average rate of the five years prewar, there would be no unemployment problem facing us in this country to-day. That is really indisputable. I am not suggesting that you are ever going to be able to employ every Tired Tim or Weary Willie, but if you take the bare facts of the case you will see, even making every allowance for those who come back, the outward net migration would have been such, had it continued at that pace, that we would have had no real problem of unemployment to face to-day.
I want to call the attention of the House to new evidence of rather a perilous character. Fortunately, it is also a, non-political point, on which I hope to gain the sympathy of Members of all parties, but it is an analysis of what is to happen in the matter of unemployment unless something very definite is begun along some new paths. I refer to the report of the Statutory Commission on Unemployment which was issued in October of this year in which we learn what is regarded by the Committee as the probable course of unemployment during the next two years. The estimate is not put forward, as is stated in the report, as a prophecy, but as a reasonable assumption, and percentage figures of the increase of unemployment are given. I read a very interesting article in the "News Chronicle," a newspaper which I sometimes find strays into my home, from the pen of a gentleman named Mr. Crowther. He had worked out these percentage figures in

terms of actual numbers and he estimated, according to these percentage figures, that in 1936 the number of unemployed in this country would be 1,970,000, and thereafter for each year, according to the report of this Commission, the figure would rise steadily until 1940 when it would reach 2,830,000. The writer, perhaps with some justification—and I daresay he is not a political friend of mine or of the Government—pointed out that a General Election would be taking place before the end of 1940, and asked what would happen if the figure had gone up by 1,000,000 at that time.
Speaking here as a Conservative, and, I believe, representing the point of view of Conservatives in general, I say that this shall not be. We do not intend to face such a situation. We are going to do much more than explore every avenue. We intend to make British trade and the British Empire a real thing. We are not going to be content with any kind of laissez faire on the subject. In Canada, which is far greater in territory than the United States of America, there is a population which is only about the size of Greater London. In the vast island continent of Australia, a country where, if you were to drop Britain down somewhere in the centre, and where you could walk for month; and months without ever bumping into this little island at all, there are 6,500,000 people, more than half of whom are living in five great cities. In New Zealand, a country somewhat bigger than England with very similar climatic conditions, there are only 1,500,000 inhabitants. When we pressed these figures and the conclusions upon the Secretary of State for the Dominions in the last Parliament we received from him a lot of sympathy but the general tenour of the Government's reply was that "things are so bad in the world, we cannot talk about it now. Come back in eight years' time, and then we shall be able, we hope, to get a move on." Our answer is that cheap land and cheap money, the two great essentials for any new development in the Empire, may have passed perhaps for our lifetime, and may not return unless we take action in the near future. Surely, now is the time for action to be taken along these lines. We want in this matter less of Mr. Faintheart or of doubting Thomas; we want men of


courage and vision who are determined to see the matter through.
We ought to fight the question of unemployment with the same concentrated will power that we displayed as a nation at war. It is not going to be got over by any simple remedy. It really wants great, big ideas; it wants the best British brains, British capital and British credit mobilised in such a cause. I am not wedded to any particular scheme. Many hon. Members have heard of General Hornby's efforts to conduct the country along the lines of his scheme. I do not mind what the scheme is, but surely we ought to be thinking now and searching the possibilities along the lines of one of these various proposals. Putting it at its worst, even if there were not any great financial profit out of any of these schemes, I submit that the moral and physical gain would far outweigh any possible financial loss. What is more—as was pointed out in the report issued two years ago—the indirect advantage to British shipping and to British iron and steel workers, and, therefore, to British miners and all the industries concerned, as well as to the Dominions overseas, is undoubtedly very great. Everyone who has made a study of the population question will agree that it is during the next 10 years that we need to save our youth from an overcrowded labour market. After that, as we know, the population problem may very likely be solved. In fact, we may be striving then to stem the decline of our birth-rate, and we may be offering large rewards to the mothers of triplets wherever they can help the nation in that respect. It is, therefore, during the next 10 years that this subject will be so very vital to all of us if the flower of a generation is not to suffer the misery which we have seen in the depressed areas and that moral wreckage which follows prolonged unemployment.
May we not ask the Opposition parties to help in this subject? We do not claim that this is a Conservative question at all. May we not hope that all parties will be equally interested in this matter? I have never doubted for one moment that the views of hon. Gentlemen with whom I sometimes disagree are as equally sincere as mine on the question of solving unemployment. We have to take strong measures, and I frankly confess

that if I were a dictator I should at once insist that we should start close settlement on three or four great estates in this country, training annually some 20,000 of our workers, with their wives and families, in mixed farming operation to prove their fitness to migrate overseas, or, failing such suitability, after a period of some months, at least to equip them with the possibility of engaging in agricultural pursuits in this country and giving back to our country once more that land sense which, unfortunately, has largely been lost. We should prepare for overseas migration now, and do everything in our power to think out schemes along the lines we intend to go.
I want to refer very briefly to the Dominion point of view. We are always being told in this House what the Dominions think about this subject, but I desire to submit to those who dwell in the Dominions two great truths. First of all, increased population alone can solve their problems and make them capable of bearing their overhead debts, making their transport systems pay, giving prosperity to their small industries upon which they put so much trust, and maintaining the burden of their social services. Secondly, I would say to the Dominions, as the friend of the Dominions who believes in the fraternity of the British race, that unless they populate their undeveloped land, they cannot hope to resist the land hunger of other nations and the laws of population pressure, which nothing in the long run can deflect, and which will threaten their very existence. We want to see infiltration when the possibility returns and it will certainly follow a real expansion of the policy of Imperial reciprocity as developed at Ottawa. We hope that the tide of prosperity is now on the turn because there are indications from all the Dominions that they have turned the corner. But infiltration is not enough. We must give a turn to the wheel of prosperity and keep it moving, and if we do that it will add to the prospertiy of all the countries of the Empire. There are some who have great hopes that Italy might solve this great population problem by means of a chartered company in Abyssinia. I am not going to discuss the merits of that question here, but if that be so, and if it is a wise policy for Italy in that uncongenial country, how


much more worth while would be the experiment in the British Empire overseas where you have all the social services and railway systems, etc., already built up.
Members of the Government have sometimes said to me in answer to questions, that they believe the Dominions will not listen to any question of early migration. My answer to that is that they have never been asked, and I suggest that if we could make a gift of, let us say, 20,000 new taxpayers and ratepayers to any one province of Canada or State of Australia, it would so start the re-circulation of wealth in those countries that you would find that all these problems would rapidly be solved in the particular area, and then, I think, you would have every Province and State of the Empire tumbling over each other also in order to gain our favours in this respect. I agree with my hon. and gallant Friend that we should do everything we can, even if it be on a small scale at first, to support new colonies in the old Dominions, to develop these areas with the assistance of Dominion unemployed and thus get the good will of the Dominions on our side at once, and start out to survey sites for the development of these areas with their villages, and, I will go as far as to say, with their towns and cities, laying, if necessary, new railway branch lines, with material constructed in the great factories and workshops of this country. If we could do that it would strike the imagination of the Dominions at once. I believe, after having made a considerable study of this question, that there are only two essential reservations which the Dominions would make. The first is that there should be no obligation upon the Dominions to maintain any of our settlers who might be misfits or failures, and that we must undertake that obligation ourselves. Secondly, that under no conditions should any settlers going overseas to the new areas compete with Dominion labour outside the areas of the settlements. To make sure of this it may be necessary for the Government to consider whether we could not extend unemployment benefit and pensions for a limited period of years to those who go overseas in connection with any migration scheme.
Let me make my last point. My hon. Friend has already referred to it. We desire an empire settlement board or an empire settlement development board, because we feel it necessary that this question should be taken out of politics and out of the ordinary departmental line of action, where you always have difficulties put up before anyone who is trying to get anything done. Such a body could look into various schemes and could say which ought to be pressed forward, and then a case could be submitted to the Treasury and we might get a move on. We think it desirable that such a body should be non-political, and rather of the character of the Tariff Advisory Board. They might go into the schemes and recommend those which they considered desirable. If State credit were behind such a scheme we believe it would be a financial success. Now is the time to ask for large sums of money for suitable schemes. We are absolutely convinced that in regard to such schemes, whether along the Hornby line or the bigger lines which have been indicated, if we had skilled organisation behind them and we were determined to ensure the success of the settlers in the Dominions—the success of the organisation would depend upon the success of the settlers—if there were a call upon the Government guarantee it would never exceed the tot 11 agreed upon by all parties in this House as a reasonable amount for the assistance of migration within the Empire, namely, £3,000,000 per annum.
I am convinced that any settlement scheme of this kind, skilfully organised for chosen areas and with the three essential factors assured, rain, soil and cheap means of communication, would cost no more, even if it fulfilled none of our hopes, than the annual amount which we spend upon an equal number of persons in this country in unemployment. I do not wish to concentrate upon the unemployed, because there are scores of people who are in employment awaiting their opportunity to go out to the Empire, and their going would provide openings for work for unemployed people here. In that way we should help to lighten the burden of unemployment. A sum of £1,200,000,000 has been spent on keeping alive our unemployed since the war. For


a tithe of that sum we could get a real move on and make a great experiment in migration. The Government may possibly be frightened at the idea of moving large numbers of people, but I would remind them that their predecessors moved 7,000,000 of people during the war and transported some of them 13,000 miles, housed them, clothed them and fed them. Surely it is possible to tackle a much smaller proposition such as the one we make.
May I remind the House of the criticisms that were levelled against Joseph Chamberlain when he went to the Colonial Office and urged this country to develop the Crown Colonies and to create wonderful railway systems, docks, harbours and so on? There were people at that time who said that it was a foolish thing to do, because the Colonies were not paying their way. Mr. Chamberlain had great faith. He went forward, and the result has been that with one or two exceptions during the peak of the depression all these Colonies have been self-supporting and have been of the most wonderful assistance to this country during difficult days. When we see the result of faith and imagination in those days I would ask hon. Members what other great constructive scheme other than thinly veiled charity is there before us at the present time. If they believe that the Empire ought to be populated, then I say, whatever the scheme may be, for heaven's sake let us adopt some scheme. Cannot we all work together and ask the Government to set up a board to thresh out these migration matters, so that we can get down to business? Then we shall all be able to agree that we have done a good day's work and that, while we have conflicts on other matters, we have all worked together to give a helping hand to those who are distressed in our midst.

4.36 p.m.

Mr. LUNN: I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Captain Macnamara) on his speech. The tone and temper of it, and his ideals in regard to the subject of migration are something that I can appreciate. He is a young man, and I believe that he will live to see the day when the Dominions will be populated far differently from what they are to-day. I would encourage him to give more attention to this subject and to see what can be done when something can be done in regard to it. The

hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft), who seconded the Motion, has had a long experience of this House, and he knows more about this subject than the hon. and gallant Member for Chelmsford. I noticed that he ignored certain facts, to which I will call the attention of the House. I have heard his speeches on many occasions, and to-day he left out all those things that he has been saying for some years. In his mind there are facts which he has not brought out to-day. He said—and it is perfectly true—that if migration had continued since the War to the same extent as before the War, we should have had no unemployed in this country to-day. That is a fact, but it ignores the conditions in the Dominions. They have gone through the same economic difficulties as ourselves, and they are not in a position to consider taking migrants from this country. The hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth knows that very well.
The hon. and gallant Member for Chelmsford suggested what the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth used to suggest, and that was that we should transfer from this country whole communities and settle them in the various Dominions. He said that that would be welcomed by the Dominions. He cannot have given much attention to the subject or he would know that every statesman in the Dominions has set his back against that kind of settlement. I accept what was said with regard to the Fairbridge Farm School, which ought to be encouraged, but that is only a drop in the bucket. It deals only with a few boys, and can do very little towards populating the Dominions with Britishers. One thing that strikes me in these Debates is the idea of certain hon. Members that we can shovel out our unemployed from this country to any part of the world and get rid of them. There is no such possibility. The Dominions Governments know about our unemployed and they have their own attitude in regard to them. Migration is no cure for unemployment and it cannot be considered in any way as a solution for our unemployment problem, or even touching it.
The Motion is harmless. It says that there should be more migration and that we should take steps to survey the possibilities of restarting


migration, but in the second part of the Motion there is the suggestion that a board should be established. I am not opposed to the Motion, and I am not opposed to the establishment of a board, but I have been a member of the Overseas Settlement Committee for many years. That committee is presided over by the Under-Secretary of State for the Dominions. It was appointed under the Empire Settlement Act which was passed in 1922, and in connection with it there is a grant of £3,000,000 a year for migration purposes for 15 years. That committee is still in existence and it has done good work. I have heard criticism of the Overseas Settlement Committee but I have heard no criticism of any scheme that has been promoted by the Overseas Settlement Committee, except the Victorian settlement scheme, which proved to be a fiasco. An infinite amount of harm has been done as a result of that scheme, both in the Dominions and here. That was the first scheme that was started, really before the committee got to work, and it began with glorified posters and advertisements which did not give reliable information to those who were to go out. Since 1923 the Overseas Settlement Committee have established schemes which they have no reason to regret in regard to settlement, after-care, reception and travel between this country and the Dominions. I know of nothing that they have done, except the instance which I have mentioned, which merits criticism, and I cannot see what a new board could do better than is being done now, or better than has been done, by the Overseas Settlement Committee. That committee is a representative body and knows the circumstances of the situation.
A board could do nothing to-day. There is no migration scheme in operation, nor is there any likelihood of there being a migration scheme for some time to come. There are many thousands more people returning to this country from the Dominions than there are leaving our shores for the Dominions. If a board is to be appointed immediately, who is to appoint it? Is it to be appointed by the person who is now called the Secretary of State for the Dominions? He has been rejected by the electors. He has not the confidence of the people. He is not a Member of either House

of Parliament. The Tories do not want him, neither do we. He is reaping what he has sown. The Government ought to take steps to see that there is a representative in this House who can speak on Dominions questions. The Dominions to-day have established for themselves, or we have established for them, free and equal partnership with the United Kingdom. We have ceased to be the mother country, and important questions continually arise between them and ourselves which ought to be dealt with by a responsible Minister as Secretary of State for the Dominions in Parliament.

Sir H. CROFT: If that is the difficulty, we are prepared to accept an Amendment to insert the words "when the Secretary of State for the Dominions is returned to this House."

Mr. LUNN: These matters can only be dealt with and should only be dealt with when we have a Secretary of State in this House, because some of the negotiations which take place between the Dominions and this country are as delicate as any discussions which take place between us and foreign countries, and they should be in the hands of a representative person. But, what is a board going to do in the present circumstances if we establish it? There is no possibility of migration overseas being restarted in the near future. If we want to settle people on the land, we should begin to settle them in our own country, which is part of the Empire. If we are to provide capital for settlement, we ought to spend it at home. We have plenty of land and the market is at hand and, moreover, it will cost less to settle families on the land in this country than to settle them in any Dominion. That, to me, is an important factor. The Dominions do not want our unemployed. I have never believed that our unemployed are unemployable; they want the opportunity to work and to work for wages. But in the Dominions they are unemployable, and they tell us that they are not going to have our unemployed dumped upon them. If migration is to be started they want the best, the pick of the basket of any people who go from this country. We have at home idle land, idle men and idle money, and if the Government would plan a scheme of


settlement here it would be the best to help our people in our own country.
But even if circumstances were favourable for migration, we ought not to give financial assistance unless the Dominion Governments welcome the idea and are prepared and willing to receive migrants; and are prepared to join in making arrangements which will guarantee an opportunity to migrants to earn a livelihood. We cannot shuffle them overseas as a cure for unemployment. The Dominions know our circumstances as well as we do and will not have them. Further, if we are to deal with this matter publicity must be reliable. We must inform the people of our country what are the conditions and circumstances in the Dominions and the economic possibilities for people who go there. There is a strong trade union movement in Canada, Australia and in New Zealand, and I think that trade unions here and in the Dominions should be associated with any scheme of migration because most of those who would have to go are working people. If the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth had read the report which has just been published, his speech to-day would have been different. What is the position to-day, and the possibilities for to-morrow? We have had an interdepartmental committee considering the matter of migration policy, and I hope that every hon. Member will read their report. They say:
Migration at present is out of the question.
They expose many suggested schemes of migration as being impossible and deal with group settlements. They condemn every group settlement scheme that has been tried up to now, and say:
they have not only failed, but their cost has been out of all proportion to the results.
They also oppose any idea of the United Kingdom providing money to settle people on the land in the Dominions and tell us that not one-third of those who have gone out as migrants to the Dominions since 1922 have settled on the land. Their only suggestion with regard to migration is one which has been taken up to-day for the first time by the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth, and that is the suggestion of infiltration, which they say is the only scheme which shows any possible prospect of success. I agree with

the various ideas of infiltration suggested by the hon. and gallant Member, that it will be a good thing to put into operation, and is the only method acceptable to the Dominions.

Sir H. CROFT: That is not exactly what I said.

Mr. LUNN: I do not believe it is possible to adopt the method now, but the fact is that the Committee suggests that it is the method of migration which should be adopted, and that it is the only one which offers any prospect of success. There is one thing in the report which I should never adopt, and that is the suggestion that we should return to the migration of young children to Canada, as before 1924. I was largely responsible for an inquiry which brought that method to an end. It was condemned both in Canada and in this country, and I hope that this form of child slavery will never be started again. If it is suggested, I shall take whatever steps I can to oppose it in every possible way, knowing as I do the conditions in Canada when it was in operation. I am not opposed to migration if there is a possibility of providing a livelihood. Our people will go if there is a guarantee of work and wages. The Empire Settlement Act comes to an end in 1937. I hope that we shall renew the Act, because our people will go to our Dominions if there is an opportunity to earn a livelihood.
What is the position in the Dominions? I am essentially a practical man, and I like to look at the facts of the situation. There has been a lot of woolliness about the speeches to-day. What are the facts? There are only three Dominions with whom we can consider the question of migration. For this purpose South Africa may be ruled out. The three Dominions are New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Take New Zealand. There is no scheme for migration there, and has not been for many years. I am pleased to know that there is now a Labour Government in New Zealand and I should like to have their opinion on this matter. Last July we had a conference which lasted for days in the Empire Parliamentary Association rooms, at which members of Parliament from every part of the Empire were able to meet. It was a good conference, and I hope that there will be more of the kind where we can discuss questions of immediate importance to


any part of the British Empire. One member of that conference is now a member of the Government of New Zealand, Mr. Frazer, and speaking on this subject of migration he said that if they could improve their markets, extend secondary industries and absorb their unemployed the movement of population would naturally grow. I agree with him. Those are three good points which he wants settled, and I am satisfied that if they are settled satisfactorily for New Zealand the movement of population will begin to flow towards New Zealand. Take Australia. I put a question to the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Lyons, when he was here this year on unemployment, and his answer was that they have 18 per cent. unemployed, as shown by the returns of the trade unions in Australia. They have no Government register in Australia and rely upon the returns of the trade unions, which are accepted by the Government.

Sir H. CROFT: What date was that?

Mr. LUNN: That was on 8th July when the conference was held in the Empire Parliamentary Association rooms. Mr. Menzies, the Attorney-General in the Australian Parliament, speaking on the question of migration, said:
They in Australia were opposed to the renewal of any group settlement system whatever.
He did not mince matters at all. I have particulars in abundance and letters in abundance from Australia showing the shocking economic conditions of the people there, and it would be an injustice to the migrants and to the Australian people to think of sending any of our people out there at this time. What of Canada? Everyone has read of the unemployed demonstrations and disturbances which have taken place recently in various provinces. Canada has a law which gives the Government the opportunity to deport people who are not wanted, and they have deported from Canada 14,000 British migrants during the last five years, hundreds more were deported last year than the total number that left this country.
Five minutes before I rose to speak a letter was put into my hand by an hon. Member behind me from a mother living at Scunthorpe, whose son is now in

Canada. He went out as a boy of 15½ years of age and has been there five and a half years. He has received only 5s. per month. He now wishes to return, but he is unable to pay his passage, and there are thousands of similar people in Canada to-day. The one way for them to get back is to sink to the depths of criminals, as it were, to become destitute, to become a nuisance, and then they may be deported. More than 14,000 of the British migrants who went out after being carefully selected have been deported in the last five years. Answering a question on 13th May the Minister of Labour said that the inward balance of British and alien passengers to this country was 253,530 in the last five years. Here we are talking about the most ridiculous subject we can waste our time on at this moment. Somehow, although the Government have no idea how to deal with unemployment, they find that anything is welcome to them as a subject of discussion. These 250,000 people have come from overseas in the last five years in excess of the number we have sent out. Those figures show that conditions in the Dominions are as bad as they are in this country.
I agreed with the late Secretary of State for the Dominions, who is now the Secretary of State for the Colonies, when he said that he would not agree to any scheme of migration until the Dominion Government could guarantee to those who go a satisfactory livelihood. There must be no compulsion if any scheme is adopted. If they wish, to go they must go of their own will. There must be, if we are establishing a system of migration, a guarantee of work and wages to those who go. Let me take the latest report on this matter. When we entered the General Election the Secretary of State for the Dominions, who is now Secretary of State for the Colonies, met a deputation in London. There had been a conference on migration at Newcastle and that conference appointed a deputation which came down to London. The Secretary of State said on that occasion, which was 24th October, the latest possible date:
Last year there were 15,000 odd more people returning than left these shores, and you have only to examine those figures over a period of years to see the tremendous connection between that and the problem of unemployment. That being so, something


else emerges from it. We have no right to ask our people to migrate and take their chance unless we are prepared to give them a fair crack of the whip, and we have no right to ask our people to migrate and take their chance unless they are welcome in those Dominions, unless a real welcome is given to them, and the difficulty we are up against, at this moment, is the large mass of unemployed in each of the Dominions. Only a few months ago I discussed this with every Dominion Premier because I wanted to avail myself of the opportunity, not only of urging this question, but of getting their reactions. They, very naturally, said 'We cannot be unmindful of this fact, that if large masses of your people come and there are large numbers of unemployed in our own towns and our own cities, it is not that they will not get a good welcome, but their presence will be resented, because it will be felt that the people already unemployed should have the first preference.'
I think that after that there is not much room for talking about instituting any idea of migration to the Dominions at this moment. Those are the conditions that exist to-day. I am quite satisfied that there will be a recovery sooner or later, and our people will prefer to go. They are Britishers who have populated our Dominions. I do not think much of the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who moved this Motion when he spoke about the migration of Germans to Australia. The population of Australia is 97 per cent. British and I believe Australia will try to see this maintained. We hope there will be opportunities for Britishers to go in the future. I have no hesitation in saying that we ought to strengthen the British Dominions when we have the opportunity, because I believe they are the greatest instruments for peace in the world. But at the moment I think our people are well advised to remain at home amongst their own relations and friends, because I think that is where they will get more consideration than is possible under economic conditions in the Dominions to-day. I know there is a spirit of adventure in people to-day, as there always has been, and many people will desire to go, and if they wish to go when the opportunity comes, I hope it will be under Government control, and that it will not be handed over to voluntary societies. There should be Government reception and Government willingness to take the scheme up in the Dominions when it is started. Then I am sure we could take the matter up and we should be willing to guide them and assist them in every way

possible, because I believe it will be in the interests of this country and the British Commonwealth of Nations to watch it and guard it carefully in the future.

5.8 p.m.

Mr. BAXTER: May I at once ask for the courtesy and patience of the House which is always accorded to a new Member making his maiden speech? It is possible that one or two of you may recall my work as a journalist, and I am realising that a greater courage is required for the spoken word than the written word, and I hope you will be patient. It would seem that the whole question of Empire development alternates between fiercest controversy and greatest indifference. Since the Ottawa Conference, which, difficult as it was, did lay the foundation of better things, there has been a great lack of interest on all matters appertaining to the Empire, and for that reason I rejoice that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Captain Macnamara) has brought the question of the Empire so forcibly before the House. I should like to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft). We should be glad that the question has been brought forward by a man young in years, showing that the spirit of Empire is not merely a memory of older men but excites youth. I have been very interested in the remarks of the hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn). It would seem to me that while giving lip service to the question of emigration he has revealed the truth. We all recognise that the Members on the opposite benches really do not want emigration to the Empire. I would suggest that in the recent Election not one Member on the opposite benches raised the question of Empire at all, except perhaps in connection with Abyssinia, or to recall that it was gathered together with brigandage and methods which would not stand the light of day. [An HON. MEMBER: "Correct."] Although the hon. Member supports the spirit of it in his words I doubt if we can look very much to the Socialist party for any development of Empire migration.

Mr. GALLACHER: We will send you fellows out.

Mr. BAXTER: Emigration does not belong to one class. I should like to see the young men of wealthy parents as well as the young men of poor parents going out to the Dominions and Colonies. There is a great adventure there, and sometimes when we look at the obsession with Europe I wish there were leaders in this House who could give expression to the excitement of peace as well as to the alarums and excursions of war. War is out of date. War is old-fashioned. Peace needs its apostles. Peace is a negative word. It ought to be a positive word. Two months ago I crossed Canada. I went from the French-Canadian section, from Quebec to the lovely western Pacific coast, where the climate is kind and gentle and the people are generous and charming. There, passing through every kind of scenery, through every kind of existence, some of it harsh, some of it lovely, I did not see one soldier in uniform. I would like to contrast that with a similar trip through Europe to-day, where there is the march of tramping feet by day and by night. And yet which is the more exciting, this regimentation of men under dictatorships and orders in Europe or the free people developing our great resources in the Dominions? Which calls for the greater qualities? I think the answer is that peace has its excitement and adventures far greater than war.
Among all the Members of this House surely the greatest impetus should come from the opposite benches, and I would venture the opinion that one of the reasons why the Socialist party was defeated in the last Election and one of the reasons why it will be defeated in the next election is that it will not embrace a policy which will take men and women and children from the dark and dismal and terrible life of the distressed areas, and put them where they will not only have a chance of life but where their people will have a chance in the future. I find myself at a loss to know why from the Opposition Benches you get this antagonism to the question of Empire development. The hon. Member opposite read a letter from a young man in Canada earning 5s. a month from

the age of 15 to 20, who now wants to come home and has not the money. Why is it that in the Socialist Press and on the Socialist platform no one ever reads a letter from a young man who has gone out and made good? It is always from that side that you get the propagation of defeat, and I would say that if a young man who went out at 15 years of age and has earned 5s. a month—I speak of the country because I was born there and have lived there—if he has fought the elements and the prairies with the character that is born in him he may make good, and his descendant may come back to this country to become a newspaper proprietor or possibly a member of the House of Commons.
Why is it that hon. Members opposite always speak of the distressed areas—always of the areas of distress and never of the areas of opportunity? Why did they, during the Election, speak always of the unemployed and never of the employed? I say to them—and I apologise if I appear to be too didactic for a new Member—that if they wish to defeat us at the next Election they must begin to preach a policy of optimism and advance. They must not, during the battle, concentrate only on the wounded in the dressing station.
I agree, however, with much that the hon. Member opposite said, just as I agree with much that my hon. Friend on this side has said. It is very difficult to do what some people have suggested, namely, create an ideal town complete with blacksmith's shop and beauty parlour and cinema, transfer it to Australia or New Zealand and call it by the same name as a town in this country. It sounds charming but it does not work out in practice. Towns and cities have a habit of springing up where God intended them to be and not where man intends them to be. That is a law of nature. But I say that emigration could be started almost at once to the Dominions. How can it be done? We must create a demand for the primary products of the Dominions. How can we do that. We have a great importing market for primary products here. Let us go to Australia or to Canada and say, "Here is your increased market." Let us sit round a table and see whether we cannot all share in the products of the Dominions and Colonies. Let us be


a great co-operative society if you like. The moment we say to the Dominions "We will increase your exports of primary products they will say to us, "Give us the men to increase our production."
I agree that if this is to be done it cannot be left to the Government alone. Representatives of the great industries of this country should sit at the same board with the representatives of the industries of the Dominions and decide which industrial schemes are possible and which are not possible. It is no use for an industry in this country to send out the nephew of the chairman merely because he is the nephew of the chairman. We must send out our big men and have these things dealt with in the right way.
I am sorry if I have detained the House too long, but I would like to add this remark: It has been said that before an economic collapse there is always a spiritual collapse. It is a thought worth ruminating upon, but perhaps the opposite is true as well—that before every economic revival there must come a spiritual revival. I do not think we shall see any Empire revival until the spirit of Empire comes to us again, and the spirit of Empire is not concerned alone with the transmission of men and goods. We must realise that spiritually, psychologically, we, as a great Commonwealth of Nations, have more to give the world in the demonstration of peace and in the demonstration of a workable democracy than in anything else. I do not agree that we want to build a Chinese wall about the Empire, with broken glass on the top over which no foreigner can look. But we must develop the Empire for ourselves, to share in proper proportion with the rest of the world, because if we stimulate the great current of Empire trade, it will draw the trade of other countries in its wake. Surely, when there is so much darkness and war and despair in the world it ought to be the aim of everyone of us—not only those on this side of the House but one might almost say especially of those on the other side of the House—to expand and develop the area of sanity so that it may at a time not so very far off, counteract the influence of those areas of fever and feud that we live next to here in Europe.

5.21 p.m.

Mr. McGOVERN: I am rather amazed at this Motion. To me it is quite impracticable at this time to suggest that emigration schemes should be undertaken. I agree with almost everything said by the hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) and especially with his statement that there is no desire in any part of your Empire at the present time to take people from this country. There are those in this House and in the country who honestly believe that men, women and children ought to be moved from our distressed areas to Australia, New Zealand and Canada to find employment and opportunities of developing their social and their family life. But there are others who raise this issue more with the idea of getting rid of our unemployed. They remind me of a mines foreman of whom I once heard. A large amount of dirt had collected which the men could not dispose of and every time the foreman passed he was asked, "What are we going to do with this dirt?" He merely looked at it and walked on but ultimately they became angry and said, "We must have an answer because we cannot make any headway while it is here." In exasperation he said, "Throw it from one to the other and perhaps you will lose it in the process." That seems to be the attitude of some people in relation to the unemployed.
The fact is that the ruling class, the capitalist class, and the National Government as the spokesmen of that class, cannot find any practical scheme for dealing with unemployment. Therefore, when they are pressed by the insistent claims of the Oppositions in this House and people in the country, they find it irksome and they want to get rid of the unemployed. I brought a petition to the Bar of the House from 50,000 starving people in Australia who had been sent out there by various Governments under emigration schemes. Those people having been dumped in Australia were left to wander about from State to State many of them bare-footed and literally starving. The Government of each State and the Government of this country repudiated responsibility for them. I spent a period in Australia and all my family are in Australia but not one of them went there to work on the land. They had more intelligence than that. While I was there, I went from Cairns in


North Queensland down the coastline, through the sugar-bearing regions to Melbourne. I worked in practically every town on the way and did not meet a single individual who had been sent out there, under one of these schemes, who did not feel that he had been tricked, that fine pictures had been painted simply in order to induce people to emigrate only to find when they got there that they were liable to be left almost to die in despair.
About 15 or 18 months ago I took up the case of a young man who went out there under an emigration scheme from my constituency. As a result of unemployment and suffering he was driven insane. It took me 18 months to get the present Dominions Secretary to impress on the Government of Australia the necessity of sending that young man home. He arrived here 10 days or a fortnight ago. He left this country physically and mentally fit. He has come back and has been dumped on his parents a physical and mental wreck as a result of the sufferings which he endured in that country. Any person who believes in the desirability of emigration to Australia, or New Zealand or Canada ought to hear the story of that young man's sufferings and his case is typical of many thousands. Boys who have gone out from this country have been dumped on to farms where they have had to work from half-past four o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night. They have been exploited and treated in a ruthless and brutal way. During the short period of my stay in Australia there was a record of four young boys having committed suicide because of the sufferings which they endured.
To talk as some hon. Members have talked here of glorious opportunities and the spirit of adventure of our race, is mere claptrap and nonsense. If there were conditions in this country that the working class were prepared to approve and a system that would give them employment on the land in this country, there would be no necessity to talk about emigration. Those who want, of their own free will, to go abroad can go there and I would not be against people, with the spirit of adventure, emigrating if they felt that there were guarantees in the country to which they were going for

their future and that the pledges either of State Governments abroad or of the home Government would be redeemed instead of people being left there as human derelicts to die of want. But we have our unemployed here, and even if you had a migration scheme, the idea of taking miners to New Zealand and putting them on the land is too ridiculous for words. If you want to put them on the land there is plenty of territory in this country held up by the selfish restrictions of private ownership. Landlords and capitalists in this country are too selfish in their idea of conserving for themselves that which nature intended for the use of every human being.

Lord APSLEY: Is the hon. Member aware that there is still an enormous amount of land on the market at the present time which can be bought without any difficulty at all?

Mr. McGOVERN: I have my own powers of observation and in going about the country I see hundreds of square miles of land which is, to all intents and purposes, derelict. Does the hon. Member suggest that the unemployed should buy the land? It is surely the job of those who have raised this issue, first and foremost, to point out to the Government that there is land available here. When that available land had been developed the Government could take more land by passing an Emergency Powers Act. They could take land from selfish landlords on the ground that even in defence of themselves and their system it was necessary to take that land for the use of the unemployed.

Lord APSLEY: There are thousands of acres of Crown land which they could take right away and start to develop right away, without passing any emergency legislation.

Mr. McGOVERN: That is only enforcing my argument, that you have a Government totally unfit to deal with the situation, and if they have thousands of square miles of land in this country belonging to the Crown, why do they not utilise it, if it is a successful enterprise, and show to the unemployed what can be done in this country? Then, if they are able to set the example, they can say, "We have no more available land in this country to go round, but there is plenty in New Zealand, Canada and


Australia, and instead of paying you unemployment allowances, we will put you on that land and give you an opportunity to develop it, and we will give you for a period of years, if you like, the rates of unemployment allowance that you have been paid in this country to assist you in developing that land." That would seem to be a sensible enterprise, but to come down here and tell us that there is land in New Zealand, Canada and Australia, while the Noble Lord tells us that there is plenty of land available in this country, is itself a serious condemnation of this Motion.
I would never be a party to encouraging the workers or the unemployed of this country to go to any other country while there ought to be available opportunities in their own land. It is bad enough living a starvation existence in Britain, among your own friends and associates, but to go out into what is, to all intents and purposes, a foreign atmosphere, where you are dumped down among strangers, to starve without a friend, is the height of lunacy, because in every one of those countries there are thousands of unemployed people already. They are there, dying, and eating their very nails off trying to get employment. During the very period when there are thousands of unemployed roaming about from State to State searching for employment, we are told we ought to increase their difficulties and miseries by dumping more of our own unemployed there. If the hon. Members who initiated this discussion had wanted to do something of a useful character in this House, they might have done exactly what the Noble Lord has suggested and drawn attention to the thousands of acres of land that are available in this country, of which no use is being made; they might have urged the Government to put the unemployed on it and give them capital and assistance to work that land. That would have been something of a more practical nature.
We have had representations in this House continually from responsible people in every one of the Dominions that have been mentioned to the effect that the unemployed who have been sent from these shores go there and lose their employment, or discover that the long hours and lack of wages drive them out into the cities and streets, and they become either potential criminals, as has been pointed out, with a view to getting back

to this country, or they are face to face almost with starvation. Are hon. Members aware that I have known people in Glasgow sending letters to their sons in Canada and Australia, saying, "Go out and smash windows," or "Go out and break into a shop, because that is the only way you will be sent home to this country?" Is it a comfortable feeling for Members in this House to know that they have sent out young men from this country by schemes of migration and after they have dumped them there have refused to bear any responsibility for them, and that they turn them into criminals in order that they may get back home again? You talk of emigration. I wish it were possible to say in this House to-day that for all those persons who are unemployed in Australia, New Zealand and Canada and who have gone out under a migration scheme, we are prepared to provide shipping accommodation to bring them back home. Hon. Members would find that almost the whole of the people who have been sent out would avail themselves of the opportunity to get back here.
What is the use of talking of the spirit of adventure? It is the fear of actual starvation that drives these people out to the uttermost ends of the earth in order to get employment. Why is it that we are always being told to send the working class out to these countries? What about the ruling class taking a turn and giving the unemployed the opportunities which they have had to live in ease and comfort and luxury? We are always told of the golden opportunities in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but when any member of the ruling class here goes out there, he goes out with a return ticket, quite secure that he can return to the old country and is not to be dumped down permanently in any of these States. Just as men are driven into the Army, Navy and Air Force by the prospect of sheer starvation, and nothing else, they are driven into these schemes of migration, because men and women want to live in the area in which they have been born, among their friends and associates and, if you like, sometimes their political environments in those areas, but the very fact that a tempting offer is made to give them employment makes them prepared to take the risk in order to give


their families an opportunity to develop under decent conditions.
If you had an application from the Government of one of these Dominions for a proportion of our unemployed to be sent out there because they were short of labour, if we guaranteed trade union conditions for the workers there, and if the trade unions also made representations that they were short of available labour, there is no Member of the Opposition here who would be opposed to these people going out, if they had the right to choose their employment in those territories; but to induce people to go out and face starvation, to roam about from State to State, with whole families kept under canvas or in wooden huts outside the cities, is quite another matter. These are the conditions you ought to tell the unemployed of this country they are going out to meet—starvation, misery, and despair. I suggest that the unemployed of this country would do just as well to live at home, even under the National Government, bad as it is, as to go out to any of these States. If this Motion has not done anything else, it has given an opportunity to expose these wild-cat schemes; but I suggest that, instead of pointing to other Governments and to other parts of the world, hon. Members should put the boot behind their own Government and Cabinet and drive them on to do something real and practical to ease the position of the unemployed.

5.40 p.m.

Mr. ANNESLEY SOMERVILLE: At the beginning of his speech my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mr. Baxter) said that the difficulties of the spoken word were much greater than those of the written word. All I can say is that the standard he sets for the written word must be extraordinarily high. I congratulate him on his maiden speech, and may I say that the attention given to it by the House was a measure of the appreciation felt by the House. We are discussing once more the vast and vital subject of migration, and that subject needs all the experience we can obtain and needs also the enthusiasm of youth. I was glad to find that enthusiasm in the admirable speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Chelmsford (Captain Macnamara), who moved

the Motion. May I add my word of congratulation to him on that admirable speech? It was clear, persuasive, and full of sound sentiment. I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Roth-well (Mr. Lunn) with a great deal of interest. A good many of the things he said I have heard him say before, and the discouragement that he expressed he has expressed before. The same remark applies to the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern). Those two hon. Members told us that to think of migration at present is, to use the word of the hon. Member for Rothwell, ridiculous, and I think the hon. Member for Shettleston would call it cruel. But they are speaking of migration under conditions that may exist to-day.
Our object—the object of my hon. and gallant Friend who moved this Motion—is to change those conditions and to make them such that to migrate will be a privilege. In speaking on this subject, it is the habit to confine it to settlement on the land, but my hon. and gallant Friend who proposed this Motion speaks not only, nor indeed chiefly, of settlement on the land, but of productive schemes of development all through the Empire. I put it to the House Here is the great British Empire, with enormous resources, resources hardly tapped, with enormous possibilities of productive development, and it is that productive development that we want, to produce such schemes as would absorb millions of our race, absorb our unemployed and the unemployed in the Dominions. That is what we aim at. We have watched for the last 15 years, since 1921–2, when the Empire Settlement Act was passed, the rise and fall and stoppage of migration, yet the needs of migration are stronger than ever, the need overseas primarily of defence. You cannot defend a country unless you have a population to defend it, yet look at Australia, with a population of some 6,000,000 or 7,000,000 and a continent that ought to maintain 100,000,000. What is Australia? A great land whose average temperature and climate are the same as in the Mediterannean region. It ought to be capable of maintaining 100,000,000 people. What is Canada? A great land with the same average temperature and climate as Northern Europe, but instead of having


10,000,000 to 12,000,000 inhabitants, it ought to have 100,000,000.
That is the prospect before us—defence, markets, activities of every kind. We want here at home elbow room, markets, and help in the defence of the Empire. It is not fair that these small islands should have the task of defending and preserving the peace of one-fifth of the world. Those are our needs, and what are the Government doing about it? A little more than two years ago the Government produced an inter-departmental report on migration. It was the work of the Dominions Office, an admirably written report, able, lucid, and most valuable as a document of reference, but of progressive productive proposals, a minimum. There is a proposal to increase the number of settlements on the Fair-bridge system. They are admirable in themselves, but the effect would be very small. It might add a few thousands in the course of 20 or 30 years to the population of the Dominions. There was no answer to the great question of migration and of training for boys. What does the report offer to young fellows of 18, who need some provision more than any other part of our population, and who would make admirable settlers?
Then as to voluntary societies, the report says to them: "You have done excellent work and we hope will continue to do so. Keep your machinery oiled and in being, and do what you can, but we cannot give you any oil; we can only give you good wishes." We want to change all that. We want this great question to be tackled by our best men and best brains. The hon. Member for Rothwell rather poured scorn on the idea of a board, and asked what the board could do different from what the Overseas Settlement Committee does. What is the Overseas Settlement Committee? It consists of a number of eminent ladies and gentlemen who used to meet—I believe they do not meet now—once a fortnight or once a month to discuss these questions without any power except to advise. They are people with their own important private affairs to attend to. That is not the kind of body to manage this great question. What kind of body to manage do we want to manage it? When Mr. Bruce then Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, was here in 1926, he addressed some of us, and said:

I have already pointed out that migration and the power of absorption depend upon development"—
not merely settlement on the land, but development of every kind. Then he spoke of the schemes they wanted to propose and said:
As a Government, we have not the necessary facilities for running a rule over these schemes to find out whether they will pprovide the necessary absorption power. … It seems to me that here there is a field for most useful co-operation between this country and Australia. Would it not be possible for you to send out a few of your best men to Australia for a few months to consider the absorption power of various schemes, and to discuss the general question of development with our Commission?
That is the idea at the root of the Motion before us to-night and of our proposals. We want a board set up to work under the authority of the Secretary of State. It would consist of our best brains, and theirs would be a whole-time job working in connection with their opposite numbers in the Dominions, making a survey of the Empire. To these boards would be submitted productive schemes, such as I have already mentioned, which would absorb the unemployed in every part of the Empire. These plans would be carefully examined and tested before being put into operation. Instead of standing, as the Government are standing in a discouraged way before this river of depression, let them get together with the Dominions, let let them have an ad hoc Imperial Conference on this great question. There should be consultation, co-operation and use of credit, and now is the time. There was never a time when money was so cheap. The Government can borrow their loans at 1 per cent. There should be Empire credit behind these schemes, not schemes run by the Government, but schemes submitted to this board to determine upon after strict examination. That is the idea behind our proposal. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is not responsible for this stagnation, and I am hoping, knowing as I do how keen he is upon progress in the Empire, that his advent to the Dominions Office means more life, more energy and the acceptance of schemes of real action.
In regard to the question of population, we in this country are nervous that we shall not be able to support our population; we are rather glorying in the decline of our population and preaching


birth control, while other nations such as Germany and Italy are increasing their populations. In the long run, the earth will belong to the best race which is the most numerous. That belief in birth control and in limiting production in our race does not commend itself to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In his last Budget speech he said that the time would come, and perhaps come soon; when the vacant spaces in the Dominions would be calling out for population; and he gave some small encouragement to people who are able to bring up children to do so. I hope he will succeed in that good work. I want this country to say to the statesmen of the Empire, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish our British earth," and to say it with conviction because they believe with Wordsworth that:
In everything we are sprung of earth's first blood; have titles manifold.

5.52 p.m.

Mr. AMMON: I propose to intervene for a few moments to give, I hope, another direction to the discussion. I would like to add my personal tribute to the maiden speech made by the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. Baxter). He has won distinction and adventure in varying walks of life, and we hope that his admission to Parliament will not be the least successful of his activities. He rather did an injustice to my hon. Friend the Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) when he accused him of being opposed to emigration and the development of the Empire. My hon. Friend simply took the line that now is not the opportune moment and that we must wait for a more propitious time. I put forward that defence for my hon. Friend because I am now going to disagree with him, not on the main question, but on the question of development and approach. I beg the House to try to look at this problem from a new angle. We should not confine ourselves to the existing conditions and the failures and distress that we know of, but we should rather try to see whether it is possible to visualise some sort of scheme, and particularly to look to the development of the Empire and to the peopling of the vacant spaces of the earth on an entirely different line and with different machinery from that which we have adopted in the past.
Some months ago the "Times" gave prominence to two letters which I contributed to its pages on the proposals for group settlement in our Dominions. One result of that was, apart from the correspondence in that paper, that I received no fewer than 1,000 letters from correspondents, all in support of such proposals and urging that the Government should be pressed to do something in that direction. Among those who wrote to me were some who were then Members of the House. I do not know why they never raised the question here, and I have had to wait for some time to voice here what I expressed in the pages of that newspaper. That indicates that there is a very widespread opinion and a widespread sense of the need of approaching the question of developing the Empire and of keeping in the Empire the people of the country. It is necessary that we should somehow or other try to bring a fresh point of view upon the question. I am not at all in agreement with my hon. Friend when he commends this report of the Interdepartmental Committee, because I think that it is one of the most ineffective reports that have ever been issued. In fact, the Committee is pretty conscious of it itself for in more than one place the report says that it will probably be looked upon as a negative report. In one place the report says:
We are conscious, however, that at first sight it may appear to some readers that our Report tends to be negative.
This report offers no solution whatever. It simply repeats the old formulas, states the position that is now outworn, and then goes on to a policy of laissez faire. We must be fair, however. The report was drawn up mainly by permanent officials, and we know that permanent officials and experts always play for safety. I have no words of condemnation for these excellent people, for those who sit on the Front Bench know that they would fare very badly if they had not their backing. But when it comes to questions of broad policy, it wants a more adventurous spirit than is sometimes displayed by the permanent official. That is entirely absent from this report. I venture to say, in reference to what my hon. Friend the Member for Rothwell has said, that a mere revival of trade will not solve this problem any


more than it will solve the unemployment problem. We can have a revival of trade to an extent that will show itself in our balance-sheets and returns and be the peak of anything we have known, but the army of unemployed will still be in possession of the field. We want something more than that. We have to take a wider vision. We do not want to wait for something to happen, like a man sitting down and watching a slow match burning up to a powder magazine and wondering how long it will be before the powder blows up. We have to force the position. I am not looking upon the Empire as a place where we can dump our unemployed, but one hopes that a scheme of settlement will do something to restore hope and moral among tens of thousand and millions of young people for whom there is no hope.
We have to recognise the position that sooner or later this problem must be faced and handled by some Government. I for one would deprecate the idea that interest in this problem is the prerogative or right of any one party. We have all to come down and hammer out a policy in regard to it. A time like this with idle money, idle labour and empty land, is the time to consider this problem rather than wait for what we call better and more prosperous times. I suggest that we can, if we rightly use this opportunity, use it as a means of forcing more prosperous times a little more quickly than they might otherwise come. Therefore, far from wishing to do anything which would worsen conditions in the Dominions, I know nothing that would worsen coditions more than carrying on a policy of infiltration. That simply means sending people to populated districts to add to the pressure of population and the economic distress which, relatively, is as keenly and hardly felt as in this country.
The suggestion I am going to make is one that I throw down for the discussion of the House. I am not sure that my suggestions, which I have put forward in other ways, will contain the solution. They do, as far as I see, offer the only way out compared with those that have already been proposed. I hope hon. Members will not get up and start "slating" me for "wanting to turn people out of England," and, further, I know all about the pressure on the populations already in the Dominions and the

unemployment they are suffering. Like the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) I have relatives out there who are suffering and know all about that aspect of the matter. The problem we are concerned with is the problem which is raised in the Motion—what can be done to ease the situation and make its recurrence more difficult? Increased populations do of themselves create fresh demands—even if it is only on the lines of the old tag about "taking in each other's washing." Increased populations abroad do to a certain extent create demand, and when we are tempted to poke fun and score debating points let us face the position that under modern civilisation the greatest industry in the world is "taking in each other's washing." We live on those lines. Undoubtedly, there is a great need for placing fresh populations on the virgin soils of the Empire, and we shall have to do something in that connection. There is a pretty strong body of opinion, at any rate a rising body of opinion, even in Australia in support of the need of settling people on the land. The Archbishop of Brisbane said recently:
If immigrants are wisely chosen it will assist in the development of vast new industries; the more people we have in the country the more openings there will be for the sale of our own products in Australia.
The Lord Mayor of Brisbane said:
The future protection of Australia is wrapped up with the peopling of the country.
Sir Raphael Cilento, addressing the British Medical Conference in Melbourne said:
We must either face immigration or invasion.
The wife of the present Australian Prime Minister said in Melbourne:
The only hope for the youth of Great Britain was in the Dominions—in this sense the future of the Empire lies with the Dominions.
I quote those remarks as an indication that there is a public opinion in Australia in support of action being taken. I have suggested before that the best way to face the problem would be for the International Labour Office to convene a conference of all the nations of the earth in order that they might grapple with this problem, because that body was presented with a petition, on behalf of 7,000,000 young persons under


the age of 25 in two or three countries who have never done a day's work, asking whether any steps could be taken. Later I had a letter from an official of the League of Nations—it was marked "private"—in which he deprecated the attack I made on them, saying, "We cannot do anything unless some sovereign State tables a Resolution with regard to it." I was hopeful that this Government might have taken such a course, but I am afraid such an adventure is more than one can expect of them.
Therefore we turn naturally to the British Empire itself, which offers the best scope for large scale adventure in this direction. Action must be taken along the line of having large group settlements, and there must be co-operation between the Government of this country and the Governments of the Dominions to ensure that we do not just dump the men out there but settle them in an orderly way to build up and develop new communities, taking charge of them during the initial years. As Commissioner Lamb, of the Salvation Army, put it in writing on this subject—and few people have more experience than he—"What you do you must do in the spirit of the parable of the Good Samaritan, who, when he took the wounded man to the inn, not only bound up his wounds but made provision for attention to be given to him afterwards." I suggest that the Government have to decide whether or not there are large tracts of territory which can be set aside to be developed right from the very beginning.

Mr. MacLAREN: What about the land at home? Why go to Australia?

Mr. AMMON: That is one of the stupid interruptions such as I begged hon. Members not to make. I am as keen as the hon. Member—I am a member of his society and have spoken for it—about the point of view he is putting, but we are dealing here with the problem of migration in the Empire. That does not by any means militate against attention being given to the problem in this country about which he feels concerned, but my hon. Friend is really trying to rule Great Britain out of the Empire, and I do not want to do that. I am asking for a conference between the various Governments to consider ways and means of nettling communities by taking out willing

and suitable men and women—whole families—in large blocks, and mostly from the same areas, so that they will not feel such homesick ness and strangeness when placed in a foreign land amid different surroundings. To a large extent they must be hedged round and safeguarded—call it what you like; placed within an economic cordon or a cordon sanitaire—in order that they may grow up within the boundaries of the place, being assisted to develop, in a decreasing degree, by the Governments concerned.
Just as Commissioner Lamb said there was no question of the Good Samaritan asking the poor fellow to sign a note undertaking to make repayment, so I suggest that this proposal ought to be regarded as a long range investment from which we shall get our reward in populating vacant spaces and in improving the morale, health and character of the men and women who are settled abroad. Undoubtedly it would relieve the pressure on the older industrial countries, and at the same time do a great deal to make use of our Empire in a way we have never yet done. One of the standing challenges to the world is that there are large countries with teeming, crowded populations while we hold large tracks of the world which are practically empty, and we are not doing anything to fill them. Such a dog-in-the-manger policy cannot continue indefinitely, and at some time or another, if we do not take steps to see that they are populated, then undoubtedly we shall be forced in one way or another to open the door to other people, and that ought not to happen. Crowded nations and empty continents make a dog-in-the-manger state of affairs.
No doubt someone will say "What you propose will cost a lo of money." It will, but I say that we are already wasting lots of money and getting nothing for it, and that we had better run the risk of this adventure in an endeavour to bring life and vitality into the Empire than to carry on as we are, simply plastering the sores from which we are suffering and applying no real remedy to our ills. We are pouring out money in quotas, subsidies, tariffs and that sort of thing and are getting nothing for it. So far as bringing any permanent help either to this community or the Empire, they are about as evanescent as breath on a window pane. While supporting this


Motion because of the spirit behind it, and congratulating the hon. Member who moved it on giving us this opportunity for discussion, I suggest to the Government that they should cut adrift from old methods and old schemes in dealing with migration and tackle the problem in a larger and more generous way. When men are sent out they should be given a fair opportunity, and if they do not prove fit they ought to be brought back and reinstated in positions where they will prove more useful. That would be an advantage to us as well as to the Dominions. If such a scheme were well planned out it would be certain to meet with a measure of success.
The trouble is that if one dares to venture on something which is new and will cost a lot of money, and which challenges old ideas and customs, it will at once encounter old objections based on policies which have nothing at all to do with this problem, which is one that we have got to solve. There is another point of view than that which I have mentioned. In Canada the population which is other than British-born is on the major side and is increasing rapidly. Like the hon. Member for Central Bristol (Lord Apsley) I have been serving for some time on a committee set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury to deal with one aspect of this problem, and we have had evidence that in some areas of Canada about 60 per cent. of the population are not only foreign but actually do not speak the English language. While not suggesting that we must close the door to other peoples it is curious that British people should be in a minority there, and the position makes it difficult for other British people to go there and earn a living. For the reasons stated I support the Motion, and I trust the House will give some thought and attention to the very rough and imperfect suggestions I have made for facing the problem on new and other lines which should, and must eventually, lead not only to populating the Empire but bring relief and hope to large numbers of young men and women who are now starting out on the journey of life with very little prospects of future success.

6.13 p.m.

Sir ALAN ANDERSON: We have listened to a number of speeches and, with one exception, it appears to me that

the speakers were agreed both on the great need for something to be done and on the chief difficulties we have to face. One speaker, having visited Australia, saw it through peculiarly dark spectacles. It is a sunny country and people wear dark spectacles, but I think his were distorting glasses. I do not think the picture given by the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) would have been recognised in that country. The mover of the Motion, to whom I beg to offer my congratulations, has brought before us a problem which ranks very high in its importance. I do not share with the seconder the view that the question is ready now for a direct attack, but take the view expressed by many other speakers that it has to be approached by very patient work before we can, with any advantage, appoint a board and expect it to get on with migration. But that it is very necessary to do so I have no doubt at all. It is one of the most necessary things for the progress and peace of the world. Looking back over the last generation or so the House will see enormous progress in civilisation all over the world. Why? Partly because we in Great Britain were affording a market for the produce of new countries, but partly because the world has been constantly shrinking in one dimension, distance, and constantly growing in another dimension, opportunity. Both these changes, shrinking and growth, were to the advantage of man, if man used his brains, as he has done. We gained enormously by the growth of the Dominions overseas. Our people went out there, settled there and prospered. We made a market for them and they bought chiefly from us. Through us, the whole world joined in that prosperity.
Now that growth has stopped. That is the point to which we have to address our attention, and not to the cure of unemployment here. I do not look upon unemployment here and migration as matters which are very closely connected. We must place ourselves in the position of the electors of the country which is about to receive the migrants: what will they ay about it? If we adopt that attitude, we find that there is a very large measure of similarity in the view held there and the view held here. It would be impossible to recommend an artificial movement of people who want


work to a country which is short of work. I may mention that I have visited Australia six times, and that I have a personal interest in it, as a shipowner trading with that country. It is obvious to everyone there that with the growth of values, the renewal and growth of population and the oportunity for everyone to go hand in hand together and, when prosperity returns, to find a market outside for their commodities or to take in each other's washing, they will demand more people. Then we must be ready to send more people out.
We have the Overseas Settlement Committee. The Mover of the Motion suggested that it ought to have been called a board. I do not think that there is much difference between that Committee and a board. One might say he did not like the way the Committee did its work; well, improve it. Something will need to be done to bring the whole question into focus, but the real problem is out there, and is, how are the people to be employed?
One naturally thinks of land. In Australia, the Dominion which I know best, there are as many people engaged in secondary manufacture as are engaged upon the land. The number of people who can be absorbed upon the land producing for export would not normally be large, because they produce so much. If the land could be populated by a peasant population producing for themselves and widening their lives, living as people do, for example, on the Mediterranean shores of Europe, Australia could hold an enormous agricultural population. As things have gone in that country up to now, and as they are tending to go in New Zealand, although that is much more rural, the tendency is to develop the local manufacture of articles which can be conveniently manufactured there, and to employ a large number of people in the towns, with great advantage to us. Their purchases of our goods, and their trade with us, have constantly expanded as their towns expanded and as their industries expanded until, unfortunately, for reasons into which we need not go now, their prosperity collapsed. There, I think, is the problem. We have to restore prosperity to those Dominions so that they demand for their natural growth, and are able

to digest, new people. Then we have to be ready to send those people out. Beyond that, it does not seem to me that we can at this stage suggest precise and definite measures that ought to be taken.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. A. BEVAN: I should not intervene in this Debate were it not for the speech which has been made from this Front Bench by the hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon). I know that this is a private Members' day and that we are all free to speak on this matter, but I hope that his speech will not be taken as representing any large body of opinion in she party on this side of the House. The arguments which were addressed to the House by the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) and the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren), which the hon. Member described as clap-trap—

Mr. AMMON: I think I am within the recollection of the House when I say that I did not use the expression "clap-trap."

Mr. BEVAN: I do not want to misrepresent the hon. Member, but I think he said in reply to the intervention: "That is the sort of cheap back chat"—

HON. MEMBERS: No!

Mr. MacLAREN: "Stupid interruption"—

Mr. BEVAN: —or stupid interruption that he expected. I have never listened to a speech which was more full of empty generalisations than the speech of the hon. Member for North Camberwell. He was asking that we should apply our minds to what he called the problem of emigration. I have listened to many speeches this evening but I should like to know what the problem is supposed to be. There is no special merit in moving people from one place to another. The mere fact that people move is not in itself a merit; you have to show why it is desirable that they should move from one place to another and what advantages are to be obtained by it. The hon. Member said that it was a bad thing that you should have crowded cities in Europe and empty Spaces in the new world. Why is it a bad thing? He said that we were, by implication, suffering


from over-population in Great Britain. I have recently been reading some account of the vital statistics of this country. Most of those who are entitled to speak with authority upon the problem inform us that, so far from our being in danger of being over-populated, there will be 10,000,000 fewer people living in England in another 100 years than are living here now, if our birthrate declines, or even if it remains stationary. We are told also that the adult age of the population is continually on the increase. The proposition of the hon. Member for North Camberwell is that we should export all our young people and wheel each other about in Bath chairs.
I submit that a cardinal and vital factor of the situation is that in all the countries of Europe, and not merely in Great Britain, if the birthrate remains as it is, and it looks like progressively declining, Europe will slowly be depopulated. That applies not only to countries like Great Britain but even to countries such as Italy and Southern Germany, where the populations have not yet succumbed to the influence of birth control propaganda. Yet this House seriously gives three or four hours to the proposition that there is a problem called emigration, and that we ought to push people overseas. Hon. Members would have done better justice to their case if they had told us first what the problem is. Why should it be easier to give employment to unemployed people in Canada than in Great Britain? The hon. Member has not dealt with that at all. Is it that in Canada, Australia or New Zealand there is not sufficient diversification of skill to enable a self-maintaining population to live there? I recently went across Canada from Vancouver to Quebec, and in every city—Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal—I met many friends from the mining villages of South Wales who had been unemployed for three years. If that be true, it smashes the hon. Member's case. The hon. Member cannot really have it both ways. There are idle miners, idle farmers and idle steel workers. There is every craft necessary for the maintenance of a civilised standard of living. There is every facility that modern civilisation needs, including land, minerals and timber. If it be a fact that all the elements of his groups are there now, will the hon. Member tell

me why have they all been idle for four years?

Mr. AMMON: I will certainly tell the hon. Member. The reason is that they are, as in this country, victims of the present economic circumstances and conditions. The hon. Member is claiming to stick up an argument and knock it down himself. I said that I admit what the hon. Member has now said, but that there should be a conference between the respective Governments to consider how to develop the entirely undeveloped territory, beginning from the early stages and absorbing naturally their unemployed.

Mr. BEVAN: The hon. Member admits too much. He admits so much that nothing is left of his case. He admits that Governments should get together for the purpose of providing credit to bring all these different people together in working communities. Will the hon. Member answer this? Has there been any shortage of credit in Canada in the last four years? Canada has been suffering from exactly the same sort of unemployment of capital as has Great Britain, and if it had been an economic proposition to put these men to work, Canada would have put them to work. Will the proposition of the hon. Member put any element into the situation which is not there now, except the element provided by the Government? If that is so, will the hon. Member tell me what greater merit there is in a Government giving credit to put people to work in Canada than in putting them to work in Durham, South Wales or Scotland?
The hon. Member has no case. There can be no problem of over-population in a country until that country is employing all the available factors of production to a maximum extent. There can be no unemployment. There exists unemployment afterwards if, owing to what somebody has called the law of diminishing returns, additional employment is giving a smaller yield of wealth. When unemployed land, factories, shipyards and every available amenity of civilised society are here, it is clap-trap to speak of their being an unemployment problem. Exactly the same applies to the other countries. I remember that in 1924 I presided over a meeting in a town in South Wales at the request of


the Ministry of Labour. They said that they wanted to put a proposal before the unemployed young men of that town, and to explain to them the opportunities of emigration to the rest of the Empire. Without committing myself either for or against the scheme, I presided over the meeting, and I am now afraid that, having presided over that meeting, I gave some encouragement to those young men to go to Canada. I am deeply ashamed that I was associated with that matter even remotely, because they went through a most dreadful time in Canada. Every city of Canada has its story of people living on the outskirts, starving and driven by the mounted police from city to city, without any sort of redress or defence, and without an elaborate system of social services such as we have built up in this country. My hon. Friend is really suggesting that we should associate ourselves with a repetition of that sort of thing, because his group settlements will have exactly the same fate that the individual emigrant has already had. The history of emigration shows clearly that Government-subsidised emigration has almost invariably failed. Looking at the figures of emigration over the years, what drove those millions of men and women out year after year to flood the portals of the New World? It was the fact that there were in those countries inducements that drew them out there.

Lord APSLEY: Gold.

Mr. BEVAN: Exactly, but I do not care what it was. If it was the growing of carrots, the fact is that it was an inducement.

Lord APSLEY: Perhaps I may have an opportunity of referring to the matter later, but the whole crux of the matter is gold.

Mr. BEVAN: The fact is that stories were told in the Old World to the effect that fortunes could be made, that higher wages could be obtained, in the New World. Under the inducement of those promises, people went out in their millions, and their experiences confirmed their expectations. They kept on going out because they were informed at home that other people had got jobs in the New World, that other people had got higher wages, and so on. Whatever it

was, whether gold or anything else, the fact remains that it Has an inducement and not compulsion, and that is the important point. When hon. Members talk about the absence of the spirit of adventure in the youth of to-day, they are really talking balderdash. All that is happening is that young men are intelligent, and they are hearing that their brothers and cousins who have gone out have not got jobs, and so they do not follow them. That is not absence of the spirit of adventure; it is ordinary, common, horse sense. It is no spirit of adventure for them to go out and experience the same disasters that their friends and relatives have experienced. I say, therefore, to my hon. Friend that if there is a scheme which will re-establish prosperity in the New World and find employment for the millions who are unemployed there now, that very fact will re-start the tide of emigration that he, for some strange reason which he has not disclosed to the House, is so anxious to see.
If hon. Members are going to discuss this problem, I beg them to discuss the fundamentals of the problem, and not to discuss it in such wide, general terms that their speeches are reduced to mere empty sentimentalities and repetitions of principles and sentiments that have now been disclosed to be of no avail. I hope that no member of our party will associate himself, in the House of Commons or in the country, with any proposal that is going to induce our young men to leave their homes here and land themselves in new countries where no opportunity has yet been available to them of building up that bulwark of social services which we have in this country, and upon which we can fall back when evil times overtake us. It is an irresponsible public act to say anything in this House which invites our young men to go out there and repeat the experiences that other young men have unfortunately undergone.

6.37 p.m.

Mr. HANNAH: As a new Member who has not spoken before in this House, I must begin by very humbly praying the indulgence of the House. I feel a real enthusiasm for this subject and for the great hopes that there may be in it for this country and for the Empire. In the first place, I feel very strongly that it is


no cause whatever for regret if other nations than ours are sending their people to populate our countries. I can quite understand the objections that, may be felt, but I cannot see why it should matter to us. All praise to Allah, by whatever hands our mission is accomplished.
It strikes me that there is something rather radically wrong when we hear from the other side of the House such terrible accounts of countries which have notoriously been very much more susceptible to Socialist influences than our own. What is the use of these Antipodean colonies electing Labour Governments and trying Socialist experiments if they are to get that kind of reception in this House? In view of the fact that so many men of alien race, like Sir Wilfred Laurier in Canada and General Smuts in South Africa, have done so much to build up our British State and to place our country and our Empire foremost in many ways among the nations of the world, it behoves us to do our very best to follow in their footsteps in developing this great Empire of ours. But, while there can be no doubt that there are both over-populated countries and undeveloped areas, I think there is also no doubt that Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa will in time be as well populated as our own country, for where fertile land and minerals exist there will eventually be great opportunities, whatever depression or temporary troubles those lands may be feeling to-day.
I want to bring before the House another point. England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales are not the only overpopulated parts of this Empire. British India has teeming millions who seek new homes. For very good reasons, the Dominions do not want men of Asiatic stock. Their reasons for that are very good, but I wish we could realise that it is not the faults, but the virtues of Asiatics that make it so exceedingly undesirable that they and we should live together. Why may we not frankly admit that an Asiatic workman is just as good as one of our own, but that he requires very much less money to supply his simple wants? There is no doubt whatever that for that reason it is most undesirable that Asiatics and Europeans should live together in the same cities. It has been very

much the same throughout history since the days of the old Greek and Persian wars. I want to plead very earnestly for justice to the natives of India. They are not invited to the great Dominions, but there are wide areas in East Africa which are still largely without populations. Those are countries to which Asiatics have gone long centuries ago, and carried out magnificent work in civilising the native Africans. Such towns as Zanzibar and other places on that coast are a witness to the magnificent civilising work that the Arabs did in days gone by. We are now the inheritors of that part of the world.
We all realise that a very prosperous white community is firmly established in the highlands of Kenya, and they must have justice. We have led them to go there under the British flag, and they must be given every possible opportunity to do their best work in building up their homes and establishing a prosperous land. Nevertheless, I feel very strongly that it is our solemn duty, since Indians are so largely cut out from the great Dominions, that they should be allowed to make new homes in these lands—that the Indians should have a very generous allowance of land in those parts of the world. I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the benefits that might come to all if we and the subjects of our King in India, hand in hand, could take our share in developing the resources of Africa and raising up the African people to a higher state of civilisation. When, in the towns of Eastern Africa, I have seen negroes wearing the flowing robes of the East, I have felt that, in some ways at any rate, Eastern civilisation is more suited to their conditions than is our own. Therefore, I feel that there is a very important Imperial responsibility in which India and Britain can work side by side.
I feel a real affection for the culture of the East. Wandering through Asiatic lands, I have felt that, in some respects at any rate, they are strong where we are weak, and when I have wandered through the byways of Japan and have seen Japanese in modern uniforms bowing at their ancient Buddhist shrines, I have felt that in some ways the combination of the dreams of the East and the practical achievements of the West is the strongest thing on this earth. We all, I hope, appreciate the ideal of the League of Nations, and we wish most earnestly that


the dreams on which it is based may come true. The British Empire is built on something far stronger than that, and I believe that, if we are true to ourselves, if we carry out our great Imperial responsibilities, Britain may do a nobler task than Rome herself in building the greatest political tradition on earth. I would especially emphasise the need that there is for justice to India in this great matter of Imperial migration, and for opening up wide areas wherever it may be found possible for Indian settlement and the expansion of Asiatic culture.

6.45 p.m.

Lord APSLEY: I think my hon. and gallant Friend who moved the Motion is to be congratulated not only on the Motion but on the speech in which he introduced it, and the speech of the hon. Member who spoke last is one which will be heard beyond the confines of the House. I cannot agree with the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) in his contention that the speech of the hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon) was not constructive. I think it is the only constructive speech that we have heard from those benches this evening. The hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) gave a figure of 215,000 as the movement inwards from the Dominions, and left us to infer that a Labour party proposed to sit down and do nothing at all, and hope that something will happen later on. I am not sure that those figures are correct, because they must surely include men and women coming in yearly from the Irish Free State. There must be at least 150,000 of them every year coming from Ireland to Shettleston and other parts of Glasgow.

Mr. BUCHANAN: If the Noble Lord states that certain people are coming into Shettleston and Glasgow, we are entitled to have some evidence of that statement.

Lord APSLEY: I have not the figures here, but I asked a question in the last Session of the last Parliament and I was given the figure of, I think, well over 100,000 people coming from the Irish Free State into this country. They must surely go on the register which the hon. Member for Rothwell has given of 215,000 coming in from the Dominions, since the Irish Free State is a Dominion. The hon. Member for Rothwell also was under some misapprehension as to the question

of community settlement. I think he was thinking only of group settlement. It is quite true that all the Dominions have condemned group settlement and that that system has failed, as many of us thought would be the case. All those group settlements were based on agriculture only. People were sent there to create agricultural communities only. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale was right there. As soon as the wind blows from the East, the price of agricultural produce goes down and you have a failure on your hands. The weaker members go out. Only the stronger ones remain, and most of them are making good now. My hon. and gallant Friend was suggesting balanced community settlement, which will include industrial workers and traders and every form of industrial life. I think that was in the mind of the hon. Member for North Camberwell. My experience of any form of community or mass settlement is that you must have, in order to make a success, either a religious or political impulse which will enable them to weather any storm, or else you must find a safe market which will not suffer from an economic blizzard, when you will get your failures returned on your hand.

Mr. BEVAN: Is not the Noble Lord missing the point? The idea of a diversified group is that it provides its own market.

Lord APSLEY: Taking in its own washing. I doubt whether that system would really work. I believe you must have an export trade to get any form of community settlement started successfully. If the Government are considering any form of settlement of this nature, they should go for the one market which is at present safe until we come out of the slump period, and that is gold. All these times of slump and boom have always been followed by either over-production or shortage of gold. When there is over-production of geld, prices of commodities—primary commodities first—go soaring up. When there is a shortage of gold, no matter what the economists may say—they are nearly always wrong—prices slump, and your primary commodities feel the breeze more than any other. At present prices are low and gold is high. It is likely to remain high for some time. If there is any suggestion of any community settlement in any country, it should be based on gold for the


next 10 or 15 years, and when the price of gold comes down the settlers will be able to turn to the land. When gold goes down, land and agricultural produce go up. The saying "money for jam" arose in Western Australia. When the price of gold drops, miners begin looking for land to buy to produce wheat instead of gold.

Mr. BEVAN: Does the Noble Lord suggest that we should organise a treasure hunt?

Lord APSLEY: No, there is no need. The treasure is there, particularly in Western Australia. The shortage that they have is a shortage of all labour of the right type. The Australian labour that goes to the goldfields has nearly always been the type of adventurous youth, including university undergraduates, who do not settle. They shift from one field to another and, when they hear of greater prizes to be won elsewhere, they go after them. A former Member of this House who was Governor of Western Australia for some years, Sir William Campion, told me that he will have room in his own group of goldfields for some 10,000 or 12,000 solid men who will go there and remain on their holding. It will give them employment for some years to come at a high scale of remuneration and, if they save their money, they will be able to be placed on the land. That is one scheme which I might suggest, but they must go very carefully and warily into other schemes unless it is possible to show that there is a safe market for the regular export of certain commodities.
There is one other suggestion that I have to offer. It may be far ahead of our time, but it might be of use. The real crux of the matter, particularly as far as Australia and Canada are concerned, is keeping up the British-speaking population. The hon. Member for North Camberwell was right when he spoke of the large number of foreigners going into Canada on the land, and the same applies to Australia. In those areas which had been settled under the Victorian scheme, whose settlers failed because they had been put on improper land, I saw the year before last large areas successfully colonised by Italians. There is no doubt that foreign settlers in Australia do extraordinarily well and,

if we do not manage to get British settlers in that country, who are wanted by the Australians, there will be a demand for foreign emigration into Australia which cannot be resisted for all time. I think there is one way of settling both these questions. Would it be possible, with the consent of Australia and Canada and of the people of Tasmania and Newfoundland, if Newfoundland and Tasmania were to be regarded as part of this country, given the same form of government as Ulster has at present, given the same laws and the same freedom to move from place to place without any restriction, so that it would be as easy to go to Tasmania and take up a business as to South Wales or Scotland? If that could be done, I believe that in time the whole problem of British-speaking people in Canada and Australia would solve itself by continual infiltration from Tasmania and from Newfoundland. The resources of both countries are enormous. I throw the suggestion out now and perhaps, if it is discussed and developed, something may come of it in time.

6.55 p.m.

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for DOMINION AFFAIRS (Mr. Douglas Hacking): There are two reasons why I have not previously attempted to catch your eye, Sir. The first is that I have been so content in listening to all the interesting speeches that have been made from every quarter of the House that I have not desired to break that sequence. The second and main reason for my delay in getting up is that there is very little really that I can usefully add to the Debate.
Before giving the House my views on this Motion, I should, like to thank my Noble Friend for the interesting proposals that he has just put to the House. It is always refreshing to hear from one who has had personal experience as a settler, as my Noble Friend has had. The proposals that he has put forward are full of interest and I can promise him that they will receive the very careful consideration of the Government; I am satisfied that he will not expect me without notice to give him an answer which would be of much value. I would also add my congratulations to those already expressed on the excellent


impression that my hon. and gallant Friend, the Mover of the Motion, left on the House by his clear elucidation of a by no means easy subject. By delivering a brilliant maiden speech in introducing the Motion he has taken the fullest possible advantage of one of the most important and popular of our Parliamentary lotteries. It was good also to hear the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. Baxter) make such a splendid contribution. He said that the spoken word is more difficult than the written one. That admission makes us all very anxious to purchase his publications. The only part of his speech to which I would offer opposition was that part in which he told the Labour party how to win the next election. The Seconder of the Motion, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft), I believe, was not making a maiden speech. We always listen with great interest to his contributions on any Empire subject.
The Motion calls attention to the resumption of emigration. As I listened to some of the speeches that have been delivered I felt that in the minds of some—not many it is true—there was actually a desire to regard emigration solely as a means of relieving abnormal unemployment in the United Kingdom. That is an entirely wrong idea which might well prejudice the whole question in the eyes of our oversea Governments. Neither this nor any previous Government in the United Kingdom has ever countenanced that view. Migration within the Empire should only be considered as a means of developing our best markets and permanently minimising the risk of unemployment here and throughout the Empire. It would obviously be a disastrous step if migration from the United Kingdom, although reducing unemployment at home, merely did so at the expense of creating unemployment in other parts of the Empire. That certainly would put an end to emigration for ever.
That leads me to the suggestion that emigration must be on a grand scale. Everybody naturally wants to see something spectacular. Many proposals have been put forward in the past which

visualise the expenditare of huge sums of money and a huge transference of persons from this country to the Dominions. Many of these schemes are attractive up to a point. One of them which I read of lately suggests that about 160,000 persons could be settled in one Dominion for approximately £50,000,000. That scheme describes how a chain of villages could be built, and how these 160,000 persons would be solely engaged in agriculture. The cost of such a scheme does not appear to be extravagant, but the fact that settlers must not only produce but must also sell what they are producing was completely overlooked. Emigrants to succeed must have a market for their goods, otherwise bankruptcy will stare them in the face sooner or later. Bluntly speaking, emigrants must not only settle down, but they must also be able to settle up. I only mention that as one example of the difficulties of a system which if put into operation would probably break down. It is true that there are difficulties in every scheme, and the greater the scheme, very often, the greater the difficulties. But difficulties were only invented to be surmounted, and we must do what we can to work out schemes thoroughly and to see that there is no loophole before we decide on taking any particular action.
In spite of what some hon. Members have said, during the last few years, when emigration on a considerable scale has been impossible, the Government have not been altogether idle—neither this Government nor the previous Government. Emigration on a small scale has never ceased. Encouragement has always been forthcoming from recent Governments whenever practical or sound schemes have been produced. An example of one of these schemes has been given to-day, namely, the Fairbridge Farm School in Western Australia. That scheme merits great praise. Then there are Dr. Barnardo's Homes, New South Wales. The United Kingdom Government have contributed both to capital and maintenance costs of these schools and homes. Another illustration I can give is the settlement of miners in Southern Rhodesia. I only give these schemes as examples to prove the Government's readiness to do everything practicable for a larger flow of emigration when the proper time arrives.
But apart from past assistance which this and the last Government have given, much other consideration has been given in respect of the future, The general problem of emigration has been constantly in the minds of this Government and the last. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth and several other speakers have mentioned the recent inquiry by the Inter-departmental Committee of which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Dominions was chairman. I was rather sorry to hear my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth describe the report as a defeatist report. [An Hex. MEMBER: "Hear, hear!"] An hon. Member behind me says "Hear, hear!" I would much prefer to say that the committee faced the facts. The report brought to light many interesting features and it made many interesting proposals.
That report was published a little more than a year ago. With as little delay as possible it was sent to the oversea Governments for their observations, and I can tell the House that the general tenor of the replies received indicates that while oversea Governments approved the contents of the report as a whole, and recognised the desirability in principle of encouraging Empire emigration, they rightly added that in their opinion the question of migration could not be divorced from the economic conditions of the country of settlement. These conditions are not yet entirely favourable, and the United Kingdom Government cannot take any actual steps to encourage extended emigration unless the oversea Governments make it clear that they are able to receive new migrants and can assure their satisfactory settlement. Emigration to be successful has to find both countries entering willingly into any undertaking. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth used a phrase which has been used on many occasions when he said that if the amount of emigration during the past five years had been as great as it was for the five years preceding the Great War there would have been no unemployment now.

Sir H. CROFT: I said in the last 20 years.

Mr. HACKING: I am willing to accept the correction. That may be true, but I must admit that on this occasion I have

to agree with the hon. Member for Roth-well (Mr. Lunn) when he says that if we had emigrated such a huge number of persons during the last 20 years, although it might have cured unemployment in this country, what would have been the state of unemployment in the Dominions?

Sir H. CROFT: Granted.

Mr. HACKING: I am glad my hon. and gallant Friend accepts that. That is proof that we cannot rightly suggest to the Dominions that they should take our unemployed population unless they can absorb them to advantage.
I now turn to that part of the Motion which makes a practical suggestion, namely,
that the time has arrived when immediate steps should be taken to survey possibilities for restarting migration within the Empire.
and that at an early date an Empire Settlement Board should be set up. That suggestion was contained in the report of the Inter-departmental Committee, and I am happy to tell my hon. and gallant Friend who moved this Motion that that portion of the report has already been accepted by the Government, and that the personnel of that board is now being considered.

Mr. LUNN: Am I to understand that the personnel of this board is being set up by a man who is not in this House, who has been rejected by the electors and who has no concern with Parliament?

Mr. HACKING: I understand that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth is prepared to accept a suggestion that this board should not be set up by my right hon. Friend in present circumstances. I do not agree that he should make that proviso. The hon. Member opposite was at one time an Under-Secretary of State, and if things went wrong in this House, or something was done which was not popular, I have no doubt that he had to stand the brunt of the attack. I tell him, as he would probably tell me were he standing here, that I am prepared to stand the brunt of the attack to the same length as he would have done, and I do not think it is right that we should delay this matter because it happens that just at this moment my right hon. Friend the


Secretary of State is not a Member of the House. I would remind the hon. Member that we still have collective responsibility in the Government, and I think that will probably cover his point. I hope it will, and I hope sincerely that there will be no proviso to this Motion.
I was dealing with the board. In the report it is suggested that the board should consist of six members, three official and three unofficial. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State believes it would be better, and the Government have accepted his view, that this board should consist of eight members, three to be official and five unofficial. It has been said by many Members during this Debate that it would be better to take this board out of the realm of politics. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Captain Macnamara) suggested that there should be a non-party spirit on the board. That is what we are trying to get. We want to obtain the best and most able persons as members of the board who will not be subservient to the party spirit but will act in the same sort of way as do the members of the Import Duties Advisory Committee. I think it was the hon. Member for Camberwell North (Mr. Ammon) who suggested that if we had on this board civil servants we should have no adventurous spirit.

Mr. AMMON: No.

Mr. HACKING: Perhaps the hon. Member would correct me.

Mr. AMMON: My reference was to this report.

Mr. HACKING: Again I accept the correction. He says that the report was drawn up in the main by civil servants and it fails because, as the hon. Member claims, civil servants have no adventurous spirit. I want to know what is to happen when we get this wonderful Socialist State which depends so much on civil servants? Are we to have no adventurous spirit then? I leave the hon. Member to give further consideration to his statement.
To return to this board my right hon. Friend has been fortunate in securing the services as the first chairman of an old and fairly well-respected Member of this House, namely, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Chorley

Division of Lancaster. The chairman will, in fact, always be the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs. The other two official members will be one of the Assistant Under-Secretaries of State for the Dominions and a representative of the Treasury. My right hon. Friend will announce the names of the unofficial members soon after the Recess, that is, always provided that the Recess lasts a sufficient length of time.
The duties of the board will be very important, and undoubtedly the members of the board will have great responsibilities. The board will have to consider and advise the Secretary of State on specific proposals for schemes of migration and upon any matters relating to oversea settlement which the Secretary of State may refer to the board. An early problem which will have to be solved is the one referred to by the hon. Member for Rothwell in connection with the Empire Settlement Act, 1922. That Act, as he rightly says, is due to expire in May, 1937, and in all probability one of the first recommendations this board will have to make will be in connection with the Act, whether or not it should be renewed, and, if so, whether its provisions should be amended. The schemes of migration recommended by the board would after approval by the Secretary of State then have to be discussed with the Oversea Governments concerned, and I can assure the House that as far as the United Kingdom Government is concerned, if the views of the Oversea Governments are favourable and they are prepared to co-operate, the United Kingdom Government will also be prepared to play its part.
As one of the main duties of the board will be to examine all schemes, I am sure that the House will not think it proper if I attempt to deal with any of the suggested schemes which have been brought to light during this Debate. It is clear that the board must be in a position, and especially its chairman, to consider every scheme without prejudice and without previous commitment and with complete impartiality.
The inter-Departmental Committee also recommended the setting up of a Central Committee on Oversea Settlement. This recommendation has also been accepted


by His Majesty's Government. This committee will deal with administration as opposed to the board's work on matters of broad general policy. The new committee, in addition to dealing with the administration of migration policy, will also be responsible for promoting co-operation—a very desirable thing—between the Government and voluntary organisations and also co-operation between the voluntary organisations themselves. This means, of course, the abolition of the existing Oversea Settlement Committee which, as hon. Members are aware, has done splendid work; in fact too much praise cannot be given in respect of the work which has been done by that committee under, in the main, very difficult circumstances. And in case there should be arty possible misunderstanding I must mention that my right hon. Friend the. Secretary of State only accepted the recommendation of the inter-Departmental Committee to appoint this new Policy Board and the new Administration Committee after having obtained the advice of the existing Oversea Settlement Committee. The old committee will not then die as a result of murder committed by my right hon. Friend, but "suicide," without any addendum, would be a more accurate verdict in connection with the end of this particular body.

Mr. LUNN: Do I understand that the personnel of the new Advisory Committee is also being set up at this time, because that is not the recommendation of the Oversea Settlement Committee?

Mr. HACKING: I said that the personnel of the board only is being dealt with at the present time. We have to get policy before we can carry out administration, and there is obviously not the same necessity to hurry to appoint the members of the Committee. The first thing to do is to get on with the election of the members of the board and we are getting on with that as quickly as we can in order that we can bring forward some policy to submit to my right hon. Friend and to the various oversea Governments.
I do not think that there is anything else that I need say to-day. I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend who moved the Motion is satisfied that it has not

only been welcomed, but also been completely met by my right hon. Friend and the Government. More than that, I think that in the decision that we have taken to set up this Administration Committee in addition to the Policy Board, we have gone even further than his request. My hon. and gallant Friend ought, therefore, to be even more than satisfied—an unusual position for any hon. Member of this Assembly to secure. In these circumstances, which I maintain are favourable in the extreme, I would ask this House respectfully to accept my hon. and gallant Friend's Motion.

Mr. A. SOMERVILLE: Will the five unofficial members of the board be whole-time members, and will they be paid for their services?

Mr. HACKING: No, Sir. It is not the intention that they should be whole-time members, nor that they should be paid, but they will be men of great experience and ability, and we hope that when the names are published to this House they will give full confidence to those who have taken a great interest in this work.

Sir EDWARD GRIGG: My right hon. Friend referred to the setting up of a board and a committee. Will that board and that committee have power to dispense any funds?

Mr. HACKING: No, Sir. They will both have power of recommendation, but it is not at the moment part of the policy of the Government that they should actually distribute funds. It may later be found desirable that the Committee should have something to do with the distribution, but it is very unlikely. Certainly, the board will not have anything of that kind to do.

Sir E. GRIGG: It would be able to recommend expenditure to the Government?

Mr. HACKING: Certainly.

Mr. PETHERICK: Will the new board to be set up contain Dominion representatives?

Mr. HACKING: No, Sir, it will only contain representatives from the United Kingdom. The appointments will be made by the United Kingdom, Government, but schemes, when they have been selected and approved will be submitted to the Governments overseas. If and


when the Governments overseas accept the proposals, then they will probably be put into operation.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House is of opinion that the time has arrived when immediate steps should be taken to survey possibilities for restarting migration within the Empire, and urges His Majesty's Government to set up at an early date an Empire settlement board, with a view to examining all schemes for organised settlement, and to recommend to Parliament any means which will assist the redistribution of population within the Empire.

WORLD PEACE.

7.25 p.m.

Mr. MANDER: I beg to move,
That this House is of opinion that serious consideration should be given to the desirability of an international police force for the better maintenance of world order and a tribunal in equity to provide for peaceful change.
I cannot help thinking that an occasion of this kind is not inappropriate at the present moment when the outlook of the new world order has been dimmed by the unexpected, unnecessary and unjustified events of the last few days. All of us will be only too glad to take any practical steps to study any possible means of avoiding the hideous spectre of war. There is no halting-place between a properly organised system of collective security and complete chaos throughout the world. I do not intend to trespass to any extent on the matters which will be debated to-morrow, though, no doubt, the events which have recently been happening are bound to come into the picture to some extent. It is about two years ago since I had the privilege of introducing into this House a Motion on these lines, but at that time it was confined entirely to the international police force. Now I am filling out the programme and including, what is indeed a necessary part of it, the provision of a tribunal in equity as well. It is not enough, simply to maintain order in the world, to hold down by force a dissatisfied unit of the nations. It is necessary to provide some means of making changes, when and as they appear to be necessary, by peaceful means. We have passed from the purely national stage of the world's history and are well into the international

sphere. That international authority will have to be provided with power to accept joint responsibility for policing the world and providing the nations with justice as between one another.
There has been during the last couple of years a considerable advance in public opinion on this question. One might begin by referring to political parties. This Motion is part of the official policy of my own party. The Labour party also are in close sympathy with the Motion, and no doubt we shall hear something about it later on. I know that there are many responsible Conservatives who are wholeheartedly in sympathy with it. In addition, I would mention two important national bodies which have adhered to it, first of all the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches, which, at its last conference passed a resolution on the lines of this Motion, and, most important of all, there is the British Legion, which has made what appears in this Motion part of its policy. I submit that it is not possible to say that, when the British Legion is right in a matter of peace and war, it is not worthy of serious consideration. I will give three examples from the three spheres of land, air and sea of how progress has been made and how specific instances can be quoted from the experience of the last two years in the matter of an international police force. I start by referring to the precedent created by the sending of international forces to the Saar a year ago. That immediately altered a difficult and dangerous situation, where there were possibilities of an outbreak of violence on an extensive scale, to one where peace and order were immediately established.

It being Half-past Seven of the Clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of The CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS under Standing Order No. 6, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

EDINBURGH CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

(By Order).

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Mr. McKIE: I feel that this Order should not go through without a few words being said. I do not want to oppose it, but something might be said about the Order that has been promoted by the Edinburgh Corporation. The main feature of the Order is that providing for additional water supplies for the Scottish metropolis. Some two years ago I had the privilege of being a member of a Parliamentary Commission representative of both Houses of Parliament which investigated a Provisional Order which provided for the taking of the whole of the concentration water given back to the River Tweed under the Talla Linn reservoir scheme, which was first entered into by the Edinburgh Council in 1895. Evidence was given at considerable length on both sides before the Commission and the Commission—I think I am liberty to say this—only came to their ultimate decision after much discussion.
At that time the Committee decided to reject the proposal in the Provisional Order to take the whole of the compensation water given back to the River Tweed under the Talla Linn reservoir scheme. In the Provisional Order tonight the House is asked to empower the Edinburgh Corporation to take, admittedly, not the whole of the compensation water as proposed in the 1934 Provisional Order but a limited amount of that water, amounting in the winter months, when the rainfall is most plentiful, to three-fourths. Some 5,000,000 gallons per day is the amount of compensation water provided for under the 1895 Act. Under the scheme now before us we are asked to allow the Edinburgh Corporation to take 3,650,000 gallons daily of the 5,000,000 gallons provided for under the 1805 scheme. In the summer months, when the rainfall in Scotland as well as in most places is supposed to be negligible, the Edinburgh Corporation propose to take one-fourth of the 5,000,000 gallons compensation water per day.
When the 1934 Provisional Order was before the Commission representing both Houses of Parliament the right hon. and learned Member for West Edinburgh (Mr. T. M. Cooper), whom we are delighted to see on the Treasury bench to-night, and who no doubt will intervene at a later stage of the discussion in his capacity as Lord Advocate, entered a most powerful and eloquent plea on behalf

of those who were upholding the principle of the compensation water. I should not be exaggerating if I said that the plea of the right hon. and learned Gentleman on that occasion went very far towards turning, if it did not entirely, turn the scale and influence the minds of the Commissioners in coming to their decision not to allow the taking of the compensation water. This evening we have a scheme which provides for the taking of a proportion of the compensation water. It is a more moderate scheme, but nevertheless the same principle is involved.
Hon. Members who took an interest in the Water Supplies (Exceptional Shortage) Bill which we passed in 1934 will remember that that Measure allowed for the taking of compensation water all over the country by municipalities and corporations during a period which has expired in the present month of December. I am sure the Scottish Members will readily understand and appreciate that we are now quite outside the danger zone so far as water supplies are concerned and are back again in the same position with regard to water legislation which has obtained in this country for 50 years, namely, that when a municipality or corporation desires—

Mr. G. HARDIE: What justification is there for a corporation giving compensation to individuals for compensation water?

Mr. McKIE: My hon. Friend asks about the question of individual rights. I hope he will understand that I am not approaching the matter to-night with any individual in my mind. I am speaking on the broad general principle of compensation water and I hope that before I have done he will allow that I have made at least one fairly good point so far as compensation water for the Edinburgh City Council is concerned. I was endeavouring to point out, when the hon. Member interrupted me, as was pointed out by the Minister of Health at the time, that the Water Supplies (Exceptional Shortage) Bill was purely an emergency arrangement and that that time is now over. It was a very difficult period that many corporations and municipalities were going through, in view of the drought conditions that prevailed in 1933–34.
When the Commission rejected the scheme for the taking of compensation water in tote—which was very largely influenced by the eloquence of my right hon. and learned Friend—they were actuated by the feeling that the adoption of the Provisional Order might be setting up a precedent with regard to water legislation. I remember my right hon. and learned Friend pointing out, very cogently, that in passing the Provisional Order we should be reversing what this House had invaribly done throughout the last half century and that we should be going back to the state of affairs that existed from 1845 to the eighties, namely, that you could give adequate compensation in terms of money for water that municipalities and corporations were taking from catchment areas which, as in the case of Edinburgh, might be situated 40 or 50 miles outside the boundaries of their own town. The Commission decided in favour of maintaining the principle that had obtained for 50 years.
On behalf of the city of Edinburgh the point was made very forcibly in evidence and by counsel opposing the Order that members of the Town Council of Edinburgh in 1895 when the Talla Linn reservoir construction scheme was started realised that as the years went on they would have to provide increasingly water supplies for the benefit of the citizens of Edinburgh, and they realised that it might only be a very short period of time before an additional reservoir perhaps bigger than the one constructed at Talla Linn would be necessary. There was a scheme in contemplation at that time to tap the catchment areas by the Fruid and Menzion Burn scheme, to provide additional water supplies which would be necessary as the years rolled on. When the Talla Linn reservoir aqueduct was constructed the pipes were made far larger than was necessary for the supplies of water that would daily be carried to Edinburgh through that scheme, showing that the city fathers of that date had it in mind that their successors would be called upon to provide increased water supplies for a very long period of time.
I have been making inquiries into the daily consumption of water in the city of Edinburgh, having regard to the increase

of population. I am speaking from memory, but I understand that the daily consumption of water is approximately 26,000,000 gallons, of which 15,000,000 gallons come from the Talla Linn reservoir and the remaining 11,000,000 gallons from the reservoirs constructed later. The population of Edinburgh is about 438,000. There has been an increase of 22,000 since the last census in 1931. If that development continues the population at the next census in 1941 will have gone up by 50,000 and will be about 488,000, compared with 438,000 in 1931. I hope the local authorities of that great city realise that under the scheme which they are promoting in this Provisional Order Bill they are again exposing themselves to the charge of entering into a makeshift or temporary policy.
I do not wish to oppose them, but I should not like the Bill to go through without the short-sightedness of the scheme being pointed out. Forty years ago the Edinburgh Town Council had in contemplation, as we were told at the Parliamentary Commission in 1934, the construction of a secondary and perhaps larger scheme in the valley adjacent to the Talla, Linn reservoir, but after the rebuff—it was a rebuff, and my right hon. and Learned Friend was very surprised at the result of the Commission's findings, even after his eloquent speech—we find the city council owing forward today with a smaller scheme and a very much milder proposal. But the principle is the same, and there is still no sign of the town council bestirring themselves as a local authority and making adequate provision for a rapidly increasing consumption of water. It was the drought, of course, which made the town council of Edinburgh realise that their supplies might run short. I happened to drive past the Talla Linn reservoir and through its romantic gorge, the scene once of a great gathering during the civil strife during the latter part of the 18th century, and I was amazed to see the low level of water in the reservoir.
The provisional Order of 1934 was rejected by the Commission, but it is equally a fact that while they did not wish to be parties to reversing the accepted principle el water legislation during the last 15 years they wondered whether the Edinburgh Town Council would make provision on the best lines, having regard to the increased water


supplies which would be necessary for the citizens of Edinburgh as the years went by. They wondered also whether the construction of the additional scheme, the Fruid Menzion Burn Scheme, might not be a very valuable asset for the town council if they were seeking to re-absorb some of the large army of the Edinburgh unemployed. During the last few years we have had a great many pleas put forward as to the necessity of the Government going in for schemes of large public works. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) went to the country at one election with grandiose proposals to this effect. It is true that the country, perhaps owing to the absurdities of our electoral system, did not give a very ready response to the huge public works proposals in the Liberal programme of 1929, but that did not deter the right hon. Gentleman from bringing similar proposals forward in the New Deal scheme which he offered at the last Election.
Speaking seriously, I suggest to the Edinburgh Town Council—this provisional Order will, of course, go through to-night—that, having regard to the insistence that we should allow no opportunity to pass which will secure more work for the unemployed, they should seriously consider whether it is not time to set about the construction of the alternative reservoir scheme which the town council of Edinburgh in 1895, 40 years ago, anticipated would be necessary within a comparatively short period of time. I do not know whether there is to be any real opposition to this Order. If any hon. Member chooses to challenge a Division and go into the Lobby I could not wholeheartedly follow him. I heard the whole matter thrashed out 18 months ago, and although I thought the taking of the whole compensation water was an indefensible principle, having regard to the period of time that has elapsed and the recent additional evidence which has been brought forward, I do not think I should be justified in following any hon. Members into the Lobby against the Order. I hope that the Edinburgh Town Council, although the House is not disposed to give definite opposition to the passing of this Provisional Order, will, nevertheless, consider very deeply and seriously the alternative reservoir scheme which their

predecessors of 1895 thought was necessary, and also remember that by so doing they will find more work for the large army, unfortunately, of the unemployed which exists in the city of Edinburgh.

7.51 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel HENEAGE: I should like to know whether this is another case in which water is taken from one catchment area and put into another. In England we have some difficulty which arises from the fact that large corporations, without very much opposition, take water from one stream and put it into another, with the result that the stream into which they put it sometimes overflows its banks. If this is a case in point I should like to draw the attention of the House to a danger. I understand that there are no catchment boards in Scotland as there are in England. These boards look after the interests not only of the riparian owners but of the agriculturists, who are interested in the amount of water which can be maintained for their stock. It means that in some cases where large corporations are taking away their water they may be short of water for their stock. It may be that these difficulties do not obtain in Scotland, but the principle whereby corporations can take water from one catchment area and put it into another is a serious inconvenience to the country.
I should like to know how the compensation water is assessed. I understand that the system on which compensation water is based consist of two or three extremely complicated formulae, drawn up by expert water engineers belonging to certain associations, and that for a long time certain of these formulae have been adopted as likely to be right. But is it not a fact that the water from most rivers, particularly in Scotland, has not been systematically gauged? It is only since the passing of the Land Drainage Act that there has been any official body, with the exception of the Thames Conservancy, who have gone in for a systematic gauging of rivers over a number of years, and, therefore, I should like to know the basis on which this compensation water is calculated. How many years have the rivers been gauged in order to know whether compensation water can be afforded and whether it is sufficient for the lower reaches of the river?
In Scotland the procedure seems to be somewhat immature. A large corporation comes along and because there is a great deal of water at a certain time they say that there is enough. Those who have seen the Falls of the Clyde absolutely dry owing to the large public works undertaken, will realise that Scottish rivers fall and rise very quickly. Has this been taken into account? I should like also to press this point of view on the House. I hope that the Scottish Office when they are inquiring into the river Tweed, which is partly an English river, will take advantage of the information which has been obtained in England as to the rise and fall of the river and the expansion of the river in dry and wet seasons. I hope they are not going to keep themselves in watertight compartments so that any information about the river will not be available for England, and I hope that in the English office there is information which is available in regard to English rivers. I view with great apprehension the setting up of dual control and responsibility, and this is a good example to take, as the Tweed is partly an English river and partly a Scottish river.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a Second time, and ordered to be considered Tomorrow.

WORLD PEACE.

Postponed Proceeding resumed on Question,
That this House is of opinion that serious consideration should be given to the desirability of an international police force for the better maintenance of world order and a tribunal in equity to provide for peaceful change."—[Mr. Mander.]

7.58 p.m.

Mr. MANDER: Before the light and liquid interlude which has just concluded I was endeavouring to give three examples of the use of international force. I have referred to the fact that the despatch of an international force to the Saar created a valuable precedent and showed to people, who up to the last were hesitant about the possibilities in that case, that such a force could be used effectively, that its mere presence made for the pacification of the area because it was known that the whole

world was interested in that spot and that the forces of the whole world were behind that limited international force. Let me refer to an earlier example, the proposals placed before the Air Commission at the Disarmament Conference by M. Pierre Cot in connection with the abolition of military aviation and the internationalisation of civil aviation. It had been pointed out that if that took place there was a rea danger that some traitor State might seize all the civil aircraft within its territory and convert them into bombing machines to drop bombs on some foreign capital.
The answer proposed by the French Government was that, there should be, under the control of the League of Nations, an international aerial police force which, because it was highly organised and because of its greatly superior speed to any hastily improvised and necessarily slower civil aircraft, could in a short time set out on the aerial routes and meet and destroy the suggested bombers. I think some reply to that difficulty was given in the practical proposal that was laid before the Disarmament Conference by one of the great nations of the world. I venture to hope that when the Disarmament Conference reassembles, as I hope it may in due course, the British Government will give it somewhat more sympathetic consideration and less obstruction than it did on, the previous occasion, and if it is found in practice that an aerial police force used for that very limited purpose is effective and practical, it may well be, as many of us hope, that it will form a precedent for using that force on a very much wider scale for the preservation of world order as a whole.
There is the other example of the Western Air Pact. That again is potentially an international aerial police force, and a reference to that was made by the Under-Secretary of litate for Air in a Debate in the course of this year. Potentially, four Powers in that pact would act together against a fifth Power who might have acted as an aggressor, and it would certainly seem that a very substantial advance has been made. If such a pact can actually be worked out in practice, very important experience will have been gained as to how far we can move in that direction.
I would like, in dealing with the practicability of an international police force, to quote the words of a very distinguished Air officer in this country, Air Commodore Fellowes, who in company with a distinguished Member of this House flew over the top of Mount Everest. At a recent conference he used these words:
I defy any acknowledged expert whatsoever to say that it is impossible to organise, to administer, and to operate an international force.
He was referring to an international air force. There you have it stated as a technical possibility from one whose qualifications cannot be challenged. We all know the main difficulties are political, and it is for us as politicians to overcome those difficulties.
I turn now to the third example in connection with naval action. I would venture to point out that in the present dispute between Italy and Abyssinia we have a potential example of international naval force action. Supposing that at any moment since sanctions were commenced—and the danger existed from the very beginning when they were imposed—Mussolini had taken it into his head to reply with military action, as he might have done long ago without waiting for oil sanctions. It was, I understand, agreed long ago that any action we might take as part of the League of Nations sanctions policy would be supported and defended by the French Fleet and by the other Fleets belonging to the League of Nations. We should have had, in fact, an international Navy, composed of British, French and other Fleets, resisting the aggressor. That might have happened during the last few weeks and it may happen in the future. We do not know whether the French Fleet would in practice actually turn up or not. There are very grave doubts as to whether it would be there on the day when it was required. That is an argument which proves that if you are to organise on some international basis it should not be ad hoc, should not be composite for the occasion, but organised on an international basis so that when the order was given by the international authority it would be there without any shadow of a doubt, and there would be no question of some national contingent saying, "We are not going to do anything

that would annoy the aggressor. We cannot go because the aggressor has told us he does not like it."
The international force would simply obey the order given by the international authority and go out and preserve order. It may be said that such a thing is impracticable, that it is difficult to conceive of the many countries acting together for any joint defence purposes of this kind. It was not so many centuries ago that this country was divided up into seven different kingdoms, and I have no doubt there were people in those days who suggested that it might be possible on some occasion in the future to organise into one kingdom. I have no doubt that they were scoffed at as hopelessly impractical cranks and that it was said that their idea was contrary to human nature and quite fantastic. The national practice, as we have found it here, has now got to be moved on and developed over a world area, and we shall find that the best way of preserving world order is to do what we have done inside our own country, organise a national police force for preserving order. So in the world we should organise an international police force for keeping order. It is not enough simply to hold the world down as it is organised at the present time. The world, as the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, if he still is Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, said at Geneva in his admirable speech, that the world is not static and some arrangements must be made for change.
There is provision for it in Article 19 of the Covenant of the League and we must give life to Article 19. In our national experience, if changes in the law are necessary we make them through legislative institutions, through Parliament. There is no world parliament, but in the dim and distant future such an organism may arise, and we have to find some machinery which will perform the function that a world parliament would perform. We have to place the legislative function in commission until there is some other means of dealing with it. There are various ways to do that. I am going to allude to three different proposals. I do not want to limit the terms of my resolution to one only.
There is the Permanent World Court of International Justice at the Hague. It deals with purely justiciable disputes. It has been suggested that it might be authorised to deal with political disputes. As a matter of fact there is the precedent of the well-known dispute of the Geneva Zones between France and Switzerland. When in the end an actual decision had to be made as to what was a just arrangement to make, changing the existing law, it was left to the World Court and they did come to a decision, altering international law, which was accepted by France and Switzerland and has led to a peaceful solution of that very difficult and tiresome problem. There is the precedent so far as the World Court is concerned. There are others who think it is not fair or wise to place these functions on judges trained in the law, and who say that you want another tribunal, ex aequo et bono, to deal with questions on the basis of what is politically wise and just. The definition which has been given to the tribunal might well be taken from that given in the words of the 1924 Protocol when it said that the tribunal ex aequo et bono should be composed of persons who "by their national and their personal character and by their experience appear to furnish the highest guarantees of confidence and impartiality."
The other method of dealing with it would be through the Council of the League of Nations appointing special ad hoc committees for the purpose, and there have been valuable precedents, one at the beginning and one at the end of their work as far as it has gone up to the present time. The first one was the dispute between Finland and Sweden about the Aaland Islands. An entirely expert commission was appointed and worked out a suggested settlement which was accepted by both parties and has led to peace and harmony between those two countries right up to the present. We have had the Report of the Lytton Committee, an admirable report, objective, neutral, which would have led to a satisfactory and just settlement of the whole problem out there if it had been carried out. It was not carried out because the world at that time had not the basis of an international police force to see that the will of the world was carried out and that the aggressor should not be allowed

to get away with it and do exactly what he liked as he did in the case of Manchuria.
Have we not a lesson to learn at the present time in the dispute between Italy and Abyssinia? We have seen the grave difficulties and dangers and even the scandals that have arisen through attempting to settle this question on the lines of political expediency and bargaining because of some remote and secret danger which is supposed to exist. Would it not be much better to refer this question to such a tribunal as I suggested, composed of people with the qualifications I referred to, who would look at this question objectively and impartially and with a view to what is fair and equitable? Having propounded such a solution it would have the backing of the League of Nations. It should be made clear to the aggressor that these were the only terms that would be accepted, and the pre sure of sanctions should be continued increasingly until the aggressor reached such a state of mind that it was willing to accept these proposals of the League.
If the present sanctions are not enough let us go a step further and apply oil sanctions. If oil sanctions are not enough let us go a step further and cut off Italy from Africa. There is no doubt at all that finality would be reached by pressure of this kind. What is quite impossible is that we should start on the policy of sanctions, and then half way through abandon it and thereby let down every nation who has come in on our request to co-operate in the application of sanctions, and let down the great trust which rests upon the shoulders of this country at the present time.
I hope that serious consideration will be given, in the present difficult situation, to handing over the question of terms of settlement to some body other than one which is purely political and moved by questions of expediency. Here again we are simply proposing to adapt our own practice in this country to the world arena. If there is a territorial dispute in England between one local authority and another we do not go to war about it. To take an example, near my own constituency, suppose that Wolverhampton had designs upon the County of Stafford, as has happened before now, and wanted to extend the borough boundary. There would be no arming


and no military language. The parties would place their case before a tribunal in equity appointed by this House and consisting of Members of this House. The case would be argued peacefully within these precincts. A just and fair settlement would be arrived at and it would be carried out, because it would be known that the whole forces of this country were behind that settlement. It is our own British and Imperial practice in many matters that we want to see put into operation for the benefit of the world.
The policy indicated in this Motion is only an extension, I will not say of the Government's policy, because, frankly, I do not know what that is, but of the policy on which the Government won the General Election and obtained their majorityy of 250. Without that policy, they would never have obtained that majority or indeed any majority at all. I trust that it is still their policy and that what has happened is just a temporary aberration which will soon be forgotten. But what the Motion proposes is just an extension of and in the long run is implicit in the policy on which they stood at the Election. I am not saying that the terms of my Motion should be put into operation now or at any particular time. I am asking that serious consideration should be given to this method of dealing with a terrible and menacing question. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham (Mr. Hamilton Kerr) has put down an Amendment to the Motion. I do not really object to the terms of the Amendment and it is not inconsistent with the Motion. There is no reason why a study of this matter should not go on. I do not suggest that this method of settling disputes can be put into practice at the present time, but I say that serious study ought to be given to it, in view of the dark clouds which we see on the horizon and at a time when all of us desire that every possible step should be taken to avoid the gathering storm.

Mr. W. ROBERTS: I beg to second the Motion.

8.19 p.m.

Mr. ENTWISTLE: I support the Motion, as a realist and not as a visionary or an idealist. In my view, world peace will never be firmly and completely established until the proposals mentioned in

the Motion are put into practice. Most Members will agree that the bulk of the world to-day desires peace and if one is right in assuming that it will be necessary to have such machinery as this, as a necessary precondition of a firmly established peace, I refuse to believe that that is an impracticable proposition or a mere Utopian dream. It is a practical proposal. I know the difficulties of bringing it about, but it is as a practical proposal that I support it. It will be agreed that ethical standards have only been established under a rule of law and order and that law and order have only been established, gradually, through progressively increasing material sanctions. That statement certainly applies in domestic affairs. It is a commonplace of the history of the civilisation and what applies in domestic affairs, in my view, is a complete analogy with what will have to take place in international affairs. It is true that once you haave a certain order and civilisation in society, habits and customs grow up and the degree of the strength of your sanctions is progressively diminished. But, even to-day, I submit, in many instances mass psychology is of a very low order and the material sanctions which are always present in any domestic system of affairs are necessary for the preservation and maintenance of our ethical standards.
The Covenant of the League of Nations is, to use the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), a majestic structure, and in my humble view it is the only hope of permanent peace in the world. These proposals for the establishment of a tribunal in equity and an international police force are designed to strengthen the power of the League. They are in no way contrary to the League, but rather implement and give the League force to carry out the principles laid down in the Covenant. Majestic as the Covenant is, I think it will be admitted by the greatest enthusiast for the League that the machinery of the League is in many respects tenuous and vague, and that the several parts of the Covenant in many respects lack cohesion and unity. Anyone who reads through the Articles of the Covenant carefully must admit that there are great gaps still to be filled up in the machinery of the League. Fortunately, we have seen that, with good


will those gaps can be filled up even ad hoc in dealing with a particular dispute. We have seen the very remarkable exhibition of unity which has been displayed over the application of the economic sanctions. But, I submit that you will never obtain that complete unity between the several Articles of the Covenant which is necessary until you have more effective machinery such as that proposed in the Motion.
I am a very enthusiastic supporter of the League of Nations, but I think it is a mistake to attempt to put too great a burden on the League until you have provided effective machinery for the support of such a burden. Too hot enthusiasm can be almost of as much disservice as indifference or hostility. The inherent difficulty in the Italo-Abyssinia affair has undoubtedly been the uncertainty as to what collective support will be forthcoming when it comes to the practical application of any given sanction. I should have thought that our experience in this dispute would have emphasised the importance of setting up machinery which will be more certain in its operation. There is no doubt that if you are to get effective machinery, it is far better to have it set up and to know how it will work before a dispute arises. It is always unsatisfactory to have to build up the machinery to deal ad hoc with any given dispute. That is the essence of these proposals, and I think it is important to emphasise that both parts of this Motion are essential. One is not sufficient without the other. You must have the tribunal in equity as well as the international police force, and the tribunal must have ample and adequate powers.
I always feel, when one talks about means of securing peace, that there is no attempt to reconcile what are strictly incompatible, namely, peace in the world and complete sovereign independence of each individual nation. If it is wrong to submit a dispute to the arbitrament of arms, clearly then a nation cannot be entirely its own judge over its own affairs or punish its own wrongdoings. The very essence of the League of Nations is that when it comes to disputes between nations, there must be a tribunal to adjudicate on these questions and that the matter cannot be left entirely to the parties themselves. This tribunal must

have the power to judge or settle a dispute on the broadest possible grounds. It cannot be based purely on juridical grounds—that is an impossibility in dealing with internatianal affairs—and the grounds cannot be static in character. They must be flexible and have inherent in them the power to effect changes. That is recognised in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and it is set out in Article 19, but that, unfortunately, is one of the Articles which is more lacking in machinery almost than any other Article in the Covenant; and we shall probably be faced with difficulties under that Article in the case of Germany before very long. We must recognise that before we can get machinery to act, we must have a tribunal which has the widest possible powers both to rectify Treaties and to settle disputes on the broadest possible grow ads of equity and policy, and on practical as well as on purely juridical considerations, because, as I have already said, it is impossible to lay down definite rules which will be available in determining the varieties of disputes which can arise between nations. One of the essential ingredients, therefore, in the powers of a tribunal must be to effect this change which is contemplated by Article 19 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
The hon. Member who moved the Motion referred to the objection which is raised to any proposa of this kind, the objection always being that it is not practicable. I have already said that I support the Motion on realistic, not on idealistic, grounds, although I support it on those as well. Is it impracticable? We have heard in the past of many things being impracticable which, within even a very short time afterwards, have proved practicable when these was the will to make them so. We are familiar with all that was said not so long ago in this House about economic sanctions. So great a supporter of the League of Nations as the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) only a short time ago expressed the view that economic sanctions we re probably impossible without bringing about war, and yet we find that there is no stronger supporter of economic sanctions to-day than that right hon. Gentleman. The difficulties of working econcmic sanctions have been very obvious in the proceedings at Geneva, but it is a fact that when they


settled down to it, certain principles were laid down and machinery was devised. We have not yet had the opportunity to see how it will work in practice, but there is no doubt that all the preliminary machinery has been practicable.
When it comes to a question of the actual establishment of a police force, we know that there are always difficulties in getting a homogeneous force when there is a variety of allied nations, but it has been achieved in the past. We had to achieve it in the last war in order to attain the success that the Allies did attain. I have no doubt there are many critics of the acts of the Supreme War Council during the War, but the fact remains that co-ordination and an international force were obtained and eventually, at any rate in the last few months of the War, operated with great effect. History is full of instances. Perhaps no greater difficulties faced any man than those encountered by the Duke of Marlborough, and the forces at his disposal were probably about as conglomerate in their character as any allied forces in the history of the world. Then we had another instance—true, not nearly so difficult as the international force which is contemplated in this Motion, but nevertheless so difficult that it would have been considered impracticable prior to its being attempted—in the international police force in the Saar. There were difficulties in the establishment of that force; not only were they overcome, but never has anything worked so well in practice as the international police force in the Saar.
When those who support the idea of a tribunal in equity and an international police force speak of that force, we mean, at any rate within any approximate future, an international air police force, and the importance of that is on this very question of practicability. There is no doubt that strategic and administrative difficulties are far less in the operation of an air force than in the operation of either a military or a naval force, from the very nature of the fighting weapon—a single unit, of course working in formation—but the whole of the administrative and strategic questions involved are relatively simple compared with those involved in an army or a navy, and it is for that reason that it is not suggested that this force, at any rate in its inception, should be anything more than an air force. There is another necessary

condition before an international air police force could be established: Each nation must give up its own national military air force. If it is said, "Then you immediately come into the realm of ideals," I submit that it is not so, because we have only to look at the various proceedings and discussions on disarmament which have taken place at Geneva to see that a great many nations, including our own, have expressly said they were willing to give up their own military air forces on one condition, that condition being that there should be effective control of civil aviation.
I submit that there have been many methods suggested for the control of civil aviation, but I do not think it could be disputed that if you did have an international military air force, that would be a very effective control of civil aviation. The whole reason why this emphasis is laid on the control of civil aviation is that civil aeroplanes are potentially war planes and can be converted, and the power would be given to that country that had the largest number of civil aeroplanes. That danger would not arise if we had an international air police force which was the only force which contained military aeroplanes. We have already expressed our willingness to abolish military aeroplanes subject to this control of civil aeroplanes. France has certainly done so. I have not the list of the various nations that have agreed, but I think that in view of those who have already expressed their assent, it cannot be said that there would be any difficulty in having that condition complied with if military air forces were abolished and an international military air force established.
Such a force would be a homogeneous military air force recruited as an international force as one unity, not necessarily with contingents subscribed to ad hoc by various countries, but it would be established and its machinery would be worked as one unit. When one speaks about that being impracticable, we should remember that our country recently entered into an agreement with France with regard to the Western Air Pact. The proposals were more than merely draft proposals because there was an agreement on the matter between France and this country, and the only reason why it is not in force is that it was made conditional upon the adherence of other


nations. Surely the administrative difficulties in operating the Western Air Pact are just as great as they would be in administering an international military air police force. Not only would the administration be as difficult but it would be much less effective, because it would be more uncertain in its action than a homogeneous force set up as proposed in this Motion. I repeat what was said by the Mover of the Motion, that the real difficulties in the way of establishing this tribunal in equity and an international military air police force, are political and not technical. I am sure that if you could get rid of the political objections, all the technical ones could readily be surmounted.
I finish with this candid admission. Of course, an international police force cannot be set up without the consent of other nations; otherwise, it would not be international. It necessarily presupposes the adherence to the idea of establishing a force by, at any rate, the preponderating number of nations in Europe. I think that one could make a start with it in Europe. It would be too ambitious to make it a world force in its initial stages, and we would have to restrict it in its inception to Europe. That would mean the adherence of the preponderating number of nations in Europe, and it is not, therefore, a matter which this Government can bring into operation of its own will. All I appeal to the Government to do is to take the initiative in endeavouring to obtain that adherence of the preponderating number of nations to this idea. We are now committed to the principle of collective action and the principles laid down in the Covenant of the League of Nations. I submit that this scheme is only providing the very machinery without which we have had all the difficulties that have arisen over the Italian and Abyssinian affair. I do appeal to the Government to say that they are prepared to take the initiative in endeavouring to obtain a sufficient adherence by the nations of Europe to render the establishment of this force and tribunal possible.

8.40 p.m.

Mr. HAMILTON KERR: I beg to move, in line 1, to leave out from "House," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

while warmly supporting the ideals of collective security and international justice, holds that the time is not yet ripe for proposals as definite as those outlined in the Motion.
I am certain the House will be grateful to the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mandel) for raising this issue. He has spoken with sincerity and eloquence on a subject which he has studied with care, and upon which he feels deeply. When, however, we consider the terms of his Motion we must draw a distinction between the underlying principle and its application. We applaud the principle, for whatever adds to the force and majesty of international authority, whatever measure deters the aggressor from future aggression, we naturally support. The hon. Member for East Wolverhampton and the hon. and learned Member for Bolton (Mr. Entwistle) argued that we must arm justice, that we must give justice, in the shape of an international authority, not only the scales which weigh human behaviour, but the sword of temporal power. Such a proposition would have delighted the ingenious and eloquent jurists of the Holy Roman Empire. It likewise has found an eloquent advocate in this century in M. Pierre Cot a former French Air Minister.
But when we consider the application of this principle, considerable technical difficulties arise. Let is look at the one or two examples of international police forces which history shows. There was the international police force of 1900, commanded by General Waldersee, which went to Peking to relive the imprisoned legations, and put to flight the ill-organised and ill-equipped forces of the Dowager Empress. There was the instance given by the hon. Member who moved the Motion, of the Saar police force earlier this year That force went to the Saar with the support, if not the invitation, of the two great Powers concerned, Germany and. France. When it arrived on the scene, it was faced by no hostile armed forces. Therefore, although the example is valuable, we must feel that it is not a fair instance of an armed force in the field. I think that the best example of internatioral co-operation for means of defence to-day exists in the British Commonwealth of Nations. The first characteristic of the British Commonwealth of Nations is a desire for


co-operation. Therefore, the Committee of Imperial Defence, when it embarks on its deliberations, knows that its judgments will be accepted more or less by the several members of the Commonwealth. Officers come from the Dominions to the Imperial Staff College to study strategy and tactics. A certain community of ideas therefore exists when an emergency arises. Secondly, there is a standardisation of weapons and equipment which is carried out between the several forces in the British Commonwealth. Most of those forces drill according to the same drill manuals, and they use the same types of munitions. Thus, should an emergency arise, co-operation becomes easy and is readily carried out. Thirdly, the several Dominions undertake financial responsibility for their respective forces. Those are the three conditions which make possible co-operation between the several members of the British Commonwealth.
Can we, wise with this experience, apply some of those facts to the organisation of an international police force? When we come to study the world as a whole we must frankly admit that a general desire for co-operation does not exist. Three great Powers stand outside the League of Nations. There is the United States of America, which, since the days of George Washington, attempts to follow a policy of isolation, and looks with disfavour on European commitments. There is Japan, which, faced with the problem of a fast rising population and with the problem of providing raw materials to industrialise her economic system, seeks outlets on the mainland of Asia. Finally, there is Germany, that great Power in the centre of Europe, which bases its present philosophy on the supremacy of the Aryan race. These three great Powers, unfortunately, stand in the way of complete world co-operation. Therefore, we must frankly admit that conditions, unfortunately, do not exist in the world as a whole for the immediate creation of a police force which depends upon the willingness of the several members to co-operate.
Let us narrow the field to Europe. Even in Europe the absence of Germany from the League presents an enormous difficulty. I cited the instance of the Committee of Imperial Defence devising

a common strategy for the British Empire. We must likewise, if the comparison is to be fair, draw the picture of a general staff of this world police force. A police force demands a general staff, commanding officers, and an intelligence service. Can we, in the present unfortunate temper of the world, imagine a staff officer representing a certain nation listening to his colleagues working out plans for applying military measures against his country in the event of his country being an aggressor? Can we imagine him listening with equanimity to his colleagues saying: "The chief aim of our naval blockade would be to deprive you of nickel and of oil, upon which you base your economy. Our authorities believe that a rigorous bombardment with mustard gas of your industrial areas will paralyse your economic system and cow the morale of your civil population." He would be the first, I am afraid, to go back and reveal those plans to his own country, and advise his country so to equip its economic life as to resist any possibility of economic strangulation. Then, in the British Commonwealth there exists a standardisation of weapons and equipment. Is such a measure possible in the organisation of an international police force? At the present moment arms are turned out by the factories of Creusot, Skoda and Krupp, and in the event of an international police force taking the field we can well imagine the disorganisation in the matter of arms among the separate contingents along the lines of communication—always the Achilles Heel of an army.
Finally, we have the question of finance. We must admit, regretfully, that only too often nations have been behind-hand already with their payments to the League of Nations. Can we not well imagine, in the economic crisis prevailing, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of some other nation announcing in his constituent assembly "Unfortunately this year we have had to raise taxes, and we shall have to raise them still more, because our expeditionary force against country X has been an additional strain on our resources." Those arguments seem to me very grave and almost insuperable when we consider the immediate creation of an international police force. Because two requisites for the success of such a force are lacking in


Europe at the present moment. The first is that, to be really effective, an international police force should act in a disarmed world. The police in this country are assured of popular support not only by public opinion but because their criminal opponents do not possess weapons. But in a highly armed world an internatnonal police force would necessarily have to possess twice the number of arms of any possible opponent in order to ensure its success.
Secondly, nations have not as yet agreed upon a satisfactory definition of aggression. Many interesting proposals have been put forward, notably the Russian proposal. But such a case as the following might possibly arise. It arose in the Sino-Japanese conflict of 1894. A Chinese transport was proceeding with troops towards Korea to reinforce the Chinese garrisons in that province. A Japanese war vessel came down and sunk the transport and its escort. Who, in this instance, was the aggressor: China, who was sending reinforcements to her garrisons in Korea, probably against Japan, or Japan, who sunk those reinforcements? Since the essence of modern war is speed, a delicate discussion on a subject would really invalidate swift action by a League force. The French plan of 1932 put forward a more ingenious suggestion. It suggested that nations should set apart from among their armed forces separate contingents which, in an emergency, would be able to form the international police force. But, again, grave difficulties arise. Because presumably the officers and men composing those forces would have to swear allegiance to an international authority. They would be, so to speak, extra-territorial units in their own country, and it is one of the fundamental principles of democracies like France and England that the armed forces are under the control of the individual Parliaments.
I am afraid, again, difficulties like those would arise when we come to discuss the principle, so eloquently outlined by the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton, of a tribunal in equity. This idea has been outlined for Empire purposes—a Commonwealth tribunal—but so far the separate members of the British Commonwealth have not agreed as to its exact constitution. It would be interesting to

see how this experiment would work. But, in the troubled state of Europe, we can imagine instances arising somewhat like the following. Say that Hungary went to this tribunal of equity to plead for the revision of the frontiers which the Treaty of the Trianon imposed upon her. Her neighbours of the Little Entente would have had to consent beforehand to an abrogation of their authority in this respect, that they would be willing to accept the findings of this tribunal of equity. I am afraid that in the troubled state of Central Europe, M. Titulescu and his colleagues would not be willing at the present moment, except under very grave threats of force, to accept the decision of such a, tribunal.
It seems to me that, in judging international affairs the saying of the Seventeenth Century French wit and philosopher, La Rochefoueauld, bears a great deal of truth. He said "We should keep a certain proportion between our actions and designs if we wish to draw from them the results they are able to produce."If we limit our objectives, very often we have a, better chance of achieving them. Scientists tell us that so comparatively an uninteresting object as the human foot took 18,000,000 years to develop, and I am certain that a very great idea like that of inter national co-operation must take a certain time to develop. At the present moment we are progressing, I think, aloe; the one possible line—regional security pacts. The classic example of such a pact is Locarno. I hope in time that the idea of mutual assistance contained in this pact will spread all over Europe, and that we shall see the conscience of eankind raised to a state in which all men are willing to act together for the good of the whole. From these small local and regional pacts there may, in the future, be a great security system built up in Europe, and Europe may be as united as she was in those days when Charlemagne, at the height of his power, ruled from Aix-la-Chapelle.

8.56 p.m.

Mr. LENNOX-BOYD: I beg to second the Amendment.
I should like to join with my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham (Mr. H. Kerr) in congratulating the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) on the competence and sincerity with which he has once more pressed forward


the same Motion as we had the pleasure of hearing from him about two years ago. I should like to congratulate him also upon the persistence with which he returns to this particularly difficult subject. The more one considers the subject, the more one comes to the conclusion that of all the difficulties associated with an international police force of the kind that the hon. Member envisages, the chief difficulty will be to find an ideal leader for that force. If anybody has qualified himself by assiduity in probing into the depths of this difficult problem, it is my hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton. He seemed to make some suggestion two years ago as to whether it might not be difficult to seepre recruits for that army. I cannot help feeling that if the potential recruits have the privilege of serving under the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton and of listening to his commands in excellent and eloquent Esperanto, there will be less difficulty in securing the recruits desired.
I should like to draw attention to one other observation the hon. Member made two years ago, and to ask whether the unreality that has since been shown to have hung around the discussion at that time will not in all probability be found also to enshroud the speech that my hon. Friend has made this evening. Two years ago he made suggestions, in the course of a similar discussion, as to the sating up of an international authority which would give the orders to this international force, and he recognised, as indeed he was bound to recognise, that if a unanimous decision were required, it would be very unlikely that any decision would ever be arrived at. He came down from the high level of unanimity and said that perhaps a two-thirds majority might be adequate for the decisions of that body. I am not going to labour the subject now, because to-morrow there will be a full discussion on this complicated problem, but I would ask him to consider between now and to-morrow afternoon's discussion whether he would consent to a two-thirds decision on the oil sanctions as binding upon His Majesty's Government, at the present critical moment in international affairs.
He then said that it was possible in the future that Germany would have 500 first-line aircraft. When we are discussing Germany's aircraft rearmament,

it is not whether Germany has 500 aircraft that occupies our discussion now, but whether or not the building programme has yet brought Germany up to her figure of 2,000 by the end of this year. The hon. Member warned His Majesty's Government that they might, in the comparatively near future, be receiving from the Italian Government an interesting communication of great moment. He was referring, I believe, to suggestions for facilitating the government of the League of Nations. He said:
I understand from the Press that the Government are likely in the near future to have certain proposals made by Italy … I have no doubt that … if they are found to strengthen and increase the power and influence of the League they will receive every sympathy and support."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th December, 1933; col. 451, Vol, 284.]
Unhappily there have been observations and suggestions by the Italian Government that have scarcely taken the form that the hon. Member had in mind. I cannot help feeling that some of the pious aspirations to which he has just given expression will be found in two years' time to be equally without foundation.
The hon. Member seems entirely to have overlooked the fact of the absence from the League of Nations of the United States, Germany and Japan, three of the most powerful nations. He has forgotten also that an effective international police force presupposes world disarmament. My experience in my own constituency is that members of his party are inclined to gloss over increases in national armament in other countries and to think that in this country we pursue almost alone a policy of unilateral rearmament. I hope that it is germane to this discussion to remind the hon. Member that since the start of the recent development in naval expenditure the United States has increased by over 60 per cent. and Japan by well over 100 per cent., expenditure on naval armaments. It is obvious that, if an international police force is to be effective, it must be stronger than the strongest possible potential opponent. Otherwise I am reminded of the cynical cartoon that appeared two years ago in a French newspaper. It portrayed a League Fleet preparing for action in Port Arthur and there was a picture of a Japanese Admiral dictating a despatch to be sent from Port Arthur:


Deeply regret unfortunate accident honourable League ships.
The hon. Member for Bolton (Mr. Entwistle) entirely overlooked the circumstance that it is impossible to envisage an effective international force which is confined purely to an air force. The same mistake was made by the hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears) who, I think, seconded the Motion of the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton two years ago. He said that it would be quite possible to have an effective international force which was purely and simply an international air force.
There are two misapprehensions in regard to the air problem and both find expression in this House. One is the view, to which I do not subscribe, although it is the view of the Prime Minister whom I support, that there is no effective defence against air attack. I do not believe that to be true; anyhow, it is not proved true. The other misapprehension, obviously held by the hon. and learned Member for Bolton, is that an effective, overwhelming and victorious stroke could be made by an international air force operating against a national army or a national navy in collaboration with their national air force as well. We have only to follow what has happened in the Abyssinian campaign to find that some of the high hopes held out as to the speedy conclusion of hostilities because the air position was strong have not been justified.
I suggest a problem to hon. Members: In the event of the Army of one nation invading the territory of another and occupying a somewhat crowded industrial centre, and the armed forces of the League being confined simply to an air force, how is it suggested that a punitive force should be brought to bear? Should you bomb the town that has been occupied by the invading army and destroy at one and the same time the invaders and the inhabitants, or should you go back behind the lines and bomb the cities vacated by that army and destroy, in the name of the international army, the noncombatant people left behind? To pose these questions does not mean that we are not sympathetic with the natural and laudable desire of the hon. Member to try to suggest how we could best evolve

a system which will permanently maintain peace. I think he would agree that the problems which I have suggested have only to be read in order to be appreciated.
The hon. Member for Oldham touched on another problem of great importance and that is the problem of speed in modern warfare. I take it that there is little likelihood that tie warfare of the future will change, but he who strikes first obviously has an advantage. In the French proposals of 1932 on this question of an international force, it was suggested that there should be kept in the different towns of Europe units of the world force, recruited in the name of the League of Nations, which could be brought to bear against an aggressor in the event of aggression taking place. When the French Government and the French people put forward those proposals at Geneva, the problem that worried me and still worries me a good deal is, when are these troops to be mobilised? Are they to be mobilised at the first suggestion of aggression, and, if so, is it not likely that the mere fact of mobilisation will mean that the threat of aggression will be followed by earlier action on the part of enemy Powers? Or are they to wait until the act of aggression has taken place? In that case, if the act of aggression is done by an air force, then by waiting they will have lost so much advantage that their victory will be by no means certain.
My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham drew attention to another problem that springs out of the problem I have just suggested. In any effective modern campaign, it is essential that the general staff should work out in advance the plan of campaign against the suggested enemy. Everyone knows that in this country in earlier days, and no doubt it is done now, plans of campaign against anybody who might attack our possessions or imperil our safety have been gone over in the Staff College of this country. In the future, presumably, if we have an international army, the international general staff must consider plans, not against one or two possible breakers of the peace, as we, acting alone, might be obliged to do, but against every nation in the world that might at some time or another break the world peace. This general


staff would be composed of nationals of the different countries—men who would not only, if they are to be successful, have to possess almost unique military and political powers, but also, what really goes with that, an entire absence of national or local patriotism. For instance, Marshal Badoglio, if he happened to be the representative of the Italian Government on this general staff, might be called upon to sit down and take part in, or listen calmly to, a discussion on how best to bomb Brindisi or Turin; representatives of the French general staff would have to be asked to listen to discussions on how most effectively that famous Maginaux line, behind which they hope the integrity of their front will be safeguarded, could be broken; and the representatives of this country would have to envisage sitting down and listening to discussions on the bombing of Woolwich, or perhaps of civil air stations like Heston, or even Hatfield. Even if my Noble Friend the Under-Secretary, who will wind up this Debate, were the British representative, we could scarcely put upon him the burden of sitting quietly by and hearing a discussion on the bombardment of his own home centre.
For this arrangement to be effective, it must also, as my hon. Friend has suggested, function automatically, and this demands a definition, upon which all parties are agreed, of what constitutes an act of aggression. It is certain that, if the League of Nations has done nothing else, it has stopped one thing which took place in every previous century, namely, the actual declaration of war. It has certainly stopped countries from declaring war, but it has not stopped war. These are rather different things, and I think we can scarcely hope for the successful functioning of a League army unless we come to some decision as to what constitutes aggression. The only material that we have at hand so far to help us in our deliberations on that question is that most certainly an act of war is not necessarily an act of nonaggression.
The hon. Member for East Wolverhampton skated most tactfully over all the innumerable technical difficulties, and indeed, the hon. and learned Member for Bolton seemed to suggest that, just because

in the past some people had rather foolishly called some things impracticable which history has shown to be practicable, so everything that is put forward now, no matter how fantastic it may be, must inevitably prove to be right when history comes to be written. I am waiting anxiously for the Debate to-morrow, and I am certain that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be very grateful for the admirable argument of the hon. and learned Member for Bolton, which personally at the moment I do not entirely comprehend myself.
He also referred to the Marlborough campaign in the 18th century. I would like to put this question to him. If we suggested that a modern Duke of Marlborough should be for all time the Commander-in-Chief of the League of Nations Army, would that be accepted by France, Germany or Italy? The very success of Marlborough's campaign came from his world reputation as a great master of war and captain of men. His wars, moreover, were in the interests of one country alone, although they were waged, of course, by an army containing people of different nations. It would scarcely be possible to find a parallel, in the unified command under the Duke of Marlborough, or, indeed, under Marshal Foch, to the problems which would confront anyone who was compelled to wage a war on behalf of the League in future, and, in addition, to wage it—and this is a new argument—with all the modern weapons that now lie to hand. After all, these modern weapons do constitute a very considerable problem which has got to be faced. Two years ago—I believe I am not misrepresenting him—the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton suggested that all the most modern weapons should be reserved for the use of the League army, and that the obsolete and out-of-date weapons should be left for the national armies to use. These modern weapons have to be made somewhere, and the men who are to wield them have to be trained somewhere. Are we to see a great barricade or screen, say half-way across Wellington Barracks, on one side of which men are to be trained in the bow and arrow for use in defence of England—I should have thought that that would demand the use of the most modern weapons—while on the other side men are being trained in


mysterious devices which public-spirited scientists and inventors had placed at the disposal of the League of Nations army?
However much we sympathise with the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton, and however much we admire his public-spirited efforts both to improve the defence services and at the same time to see those defence services give way to an international army, we cannot possibly concede that the second objective is likely to be achieved by the Motion that he has put on the Order Paper. He agreed, as I think the hon. and learned Member for Bolton also agreed, that that problem will never be satisfactorily solved until the problem of civil aviation is properly tackled, but, if the suggestion made by one hon. Member who supported him were carried out, namely, that nations should be allowed to have aircraft up to a certain horsepower—say 500 or something less—which they could expand on their own account quite happily at home, while the bigger civil aircraft were put under international control, I would ask him to recognise that most of the bombing damage done in the last was was done by aeroplanes, the best that had then been evolved, which were very little stronger than, and sometimes not as strong as, the smallest Moth aeroplane that we see in the sky to-day.
This problem, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham said, will never be tackled at all unless public feeling is behind the organisation that it is proposed to set up. If public feeling in every country in the world that matters were entirely behind the League of Nations, the present unhappy situation in the world would not have developed. If public feeling were entirely behind the setting up by the League of new machinery before which people who suffer under treaty inequalities could bring their grievances to be acknowledged, then I think the machinery of the League of Nations under Article 19 would have already been used in the past. It is no use adding to the machinery under which the world is going to try to evolve a peaceful solution for all our troubles until we have proved that we are able to work the machinery that we have, and have got the will to peace acknowledged all over the world.

9.14 p.m.

Mr. MONTAGUE: I could not help thinking, while I was listening to the speeches of the Mover and Seconder of the Amendment, that many of the problems and difficulties which they traversed, serious and important as they are, were of a similar character to difficulties and problems which could be put forward in reference to other measures of collective action, notably the Western Air Pact. After all, no one wishes to minimise those difficulties, but we have to consider them, and the question in general, from the standpoint not only of abstract discussion but also with reference to the practical alternatives in front of us.
The Mover of the Motion began by presuming that the Labour party would be in general sympathy with it. That is perfectly true. The Labour party supports the idea in principle of an international police force and an equity tribunal, although I would make the reservation that there may be, especially in regard to the second of those proposals, some questions of detail where we might have points of difference. But in general it is natural that the Motion should find support within the Labour party, for the Labour party has always been fully aware that the solution of the problem of eliminating war as a method of settling disputes, or as an instrument for effecting change, necessitates the organisation of peace in such a manner that not only the static question of security shall be considered and that there shall be adequate machinery in connection with this question, but also the dynamic principle of change. There may be questions as to the way in which an equity tribunal shall be set up and it is true that there are methods, through the nineteenth section of the Covenant, by means of which it is possible to deal with questions involving, for instance, the revision of treaties. The purpose, I take it, of an international tribunal of equity is to deal with this question and others rather more important and bigger, and others, too, which involve the consideration of problems which might arise in the future. Much of the feeling of insecurity that troubles the nations of the world to-day arises from the fact that science has developed a method of warfare which can lead to quick devastation when employed by one nation against another, and it is because of that more than any other consideration that


this desire for international machinery, an international police force, the power of enforcing international law, is so important at the present moment.
I should like to say a word or two about the use of the aeroplane in modern warfare. Our point of view is that pacts are no guarantee of security at all. We have heard from several speakers about the Western Air Pact which is being held up owing to the situation to-day, but it is wrong to speak of the proposed Western Air Pact as an air Locarno. It is nothing of the kind. It is a substitution for Locarno, because it is outside and not inside the machinery of the League of Nations, and when it comes down to matters of practical detail, I feel that the Western Air Pact proposals should receive very close and critical attention indeed. What is the air policy of this Government, because a great deal depends upon the attitude of Britain in respect to air armaments so far as concerns the possibility of international agreement and anything in the nature of an international police force. The air policy of this Government, at any rate, is not one of filling up gaps. It has been definitely stated by a former Secretary of State for Air when he said that it was proposed to build an air force equal at least to any air force within striking distance. He went on to say that, if that were not sufficient, it would be necessary to increase expenditure above that, and he anticipated that the country would be behind any Government which took measures under necessity in that direction. That policy of building up an air force equal to the strongest air force within striking distance, as things are to-day, means that we have to keep step by step with Germany. That is the meaning of the air policy of this Government. I am not for the moment criticising it as a policy but I want to examine what it implies and what effect the situation in Europe and in the world to-day may have on the whole question of air armaments in this country.
Germany has half as big a population again as this country, and her capacity for industrial expansion corresponds to that larger population. More than that, Germany is not a country with colonies. She has no far flung Empire and no large trade routes to protect, whereas Britain

has all those. We have commitments controlling in some degree or other a quarter of the earth's surface, commitments in all parts of the world—in the Pacific, Singapore, the Mediterranean, the Near East, India, and so forth. If we are to keep step by step with Germany in the air, we have to do that over and above the maintenance of the efficient defence of the Empire. Let us consider what that means. The Prime Minister said a little while ago that a dictatorship has great advantages over democracy in questions of armaments. It has, for instance, the advantage of secrecy, the advantage of being able to overthrow any internal opposition, the advantage of being able to tax to the point of exhaustion, and, above all, the power to reduce the standard of life to a level lower than any open democracy would tolerate. It seems to me that a policy of that character, which is the alternative to some measure of international agreement, of an international police force and machinery for the maintenance of international law—the policy of keeping step by step with the strongest air force within striking distance means that you have to accept the political philosophy of Germany. I am sure that the people of this country, with their history, with all that democracy has meant in the development of our nation, would not tolerate the political conditions which would enable us to arm in the air, in addition to our other commitments, against Germany as a potential enemy, upon the political and structural terms which are implied with regard to the German nation and its dictatorship.
I would like to say a word or two on another subject upon which most of the speakers have touched, and that is the question of the civil aeroplane and the possibility of its conversion to a military aircraft. A great deal of nonsense is spoken about that possibility. It is perfectly true that if you abolish every kind of military aircraft, just as you might fight with stones and slings and bows and arrows, you might be able to fight with civil aircraft. Some people have the idea that some day the sky will be darkened by a great fleet of commercial aero-planes coming over to drop their bombs out of their cabin windows or over the sides. A future Wellington or Blucher might say:


The pterodactyl and the busy bee,
The gyro and the flying flea,
They may not fright the enemy,
But, by God, they frighten me.
I do not think for one moment that the real menace which is associated with this question of civil aviation has to do with the use of the civil aeroplane for military purposes. It is more a question of ground organisation, aerodromes, training of pilots and so forth. This last year an experiment was tried in America with a Northrop E.2 machine, to which a bomb dropping apparatus was fitted. This aeroplane, from a civil point of view, had a very great speed, was very strong and was the best of its type. The result of the experiment was to show that the adjustment of a bomb-dropping apparatus had the effect of reducing the performance of that aeroplane to something lower than the normal performance of a civil aeroplane of that type. A plane such as an interceptor would be able to make rings round an aircraft carrying bombs and sufficient petrol to make the journey here and back again to any country likely to be a potential aggressor. It is true that there are other types of convertible aeroplanes, notably the German kind, where the structure approximates to that of a bombing aeroplane. It was used for civil purposes uncommercially and could be easily converted into a bombing aeroplane. It would be quite untrue to regard it as a convertible civil aeroplane. It was a convertible bombing machine and was converted into a civil aeroplane as a form of camouflage. Lord Londonderry himself must know that the abolition of the bombing aeroplane, if it is accepted by the nations of the world, includes the abolition of that type of bombing aeroplane which is regarded as a convertible aeroplane.
With regard to the tribunal in equity, the Labour party is not tied to any particular method of dealing with this question. I will admit that evolution takes time. I am not sure that I want to wait 18,000,000 years before some of the ideals I hold are realised. It may take 18,000,000 years to evolve a foot; it does not take 18,000,000 years to evolve a bomber. Probably the best method would be much upon the lines of the Lytton Commission, more of an ad hoc body than a permanent body, but that is a matter of detail. I am concerned

about the problems which face us that are unsoluble by purely national effort. Take, for instance, the question of Japan. There we have a nation in the Far East that we call an aggressor as far as its aggression in Manchuria was concerned. But let us be fair even to Japan, which is a country 18.9 per cent. of which can be cultivated. It has a population pressure of 2,148 per square mile of arable land, and an annual birthrate of 908,000.

Mr. LOFTUS: The hon. Gentleman said an annual birthrate of 908,000. I think he meant an annual increase of population.

Mr. MONTAGUE: I thank the hon. Member for the correction. I meant an annual increase of pot ulation of 908,000. What is Japan to do? You must remember that there is one great area of land in the Pacific which is populated by 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 white men, a huge continent, a great part of which is available for development on Asiatic lines. We say, "Hands off." I am not arguing whether that is desirable or not, whether we should keep the Japanese out of Australia or not. We can think Victorian or Elizabeth in if we like, but that problem is some day going to be a very urgent problem in the Pacific. It is all very well to talk about thinking imperially, but we have got to face these world problems, which, if they are not solved, may mean the overthrow of civilisation, including ihe British Empire itself.

Major PROCTER: Does the hon. Gentleman imply that it is the policy of the Labour party that Australia should be given to the Japanese?

Mr. MONTAGUE: I do not imply and I do not impute that, but I say that it would be better for this nation and for the world to face that problem in time. We have to reach some kind of arrangement with regard to the economic resources of the world. That has been admitted by the Foreign Secretary, and surely the best thing that can be done is to deal with that question before the great urgency arises and not think about these matters merely from the point of view, as was evidently behind the mind of the hon. and gallant Member who interrupted


me, of ordinary Imperialistic thinking.

Major PROCTER: Does the hon. Gentleman mean that before these problems become acute we should now make arrangements to hand over parts of Australia to the Japanese?

Mr. MONTAGUE: I have already referred to what the Foreign Secretary said at Geneva. The hon. Member must think in advance about these problems. Does he or any other hon. Member imagine that Britain can go on controlling a quarter of the surface of the world without at least being ready to consider and debate questions of this character, especially in view of the development of modern armaments, the necessities of nations and the economy of the world in general.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: Even though we control these countries are they not, under the Statute of Westminster, all free countries?

Mr. MONTAGUE: I am not talking about Colonies or Protectorates. I am speaking, by way of illustration, of Australia and the problem of the Pacific, and it may be possible to solve the problem which I have mentioned in another way, but I insist that an equity tribunal, some method and machinery, for the consideration, in time, of these important problems should be set up. I do not wish to say a word about the British Empire or the necessity of maintaining that Empire. I am not dealing with that question, but merely suggesting to hon. Members that it is exceedingly desirable that we should look at the question with a long sight, and also within sight. As far as the idea of splendid isolation is concerned, Britain might probably have been more splendid, but she did not remain isolated very long, and under the conditions of modern warfare it is absurd to talk about isolation. The question of civil aviation and its use for military purposes is wrapped up with the international control of civil aviation. I would point out to those who object to the idea of international civil aviation that, after all, aviation is in itself international in character. The very essence of flying involves the passage of aeroplanes over various countries, and there is a great deal of international control of civil aviation.
There is a body which controls, to some extent, civil aviation from the international point of view. When the development of Imperial Airways to the Cape and to Australia was first under consideration, the greatest difficulties were those which arose from national aviation and the various conflicting arrangements that were in force in different countries, and also the commercial difficulties where there were small lines using smaller machines for commercial purposes and so forth. For these reasons the machinery for peaceful change and the power to enforce law are principles which the Labour party support in general. It is true that the question presents difficulties, but they must be faced in advance of those kinds of political and economic storms that we shall have if we are prepared merely to observe the old rule-of-thumb in this matter. If the political Governments of the world remain stationary while the scientific side develops rapidly, we may be plunged into chaos and ruin because of the vital importance of these problems. It is obvious that research into the best methods of effecting peaceful change and obtaining security should not be left solely to individual groups and societies, and with the reservations which I have mentioned, the Labour party support this Motion.

9.41 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) will not expect me to try to follow his arguments, since they had little to do with the Motion on the Paper. He has, however, demonstrated that he has not lost touch with air matters since he has unhappily deprived us of his presence in this House, and that he is fully qualified to resume his old position in those dim far off days when possibly the Socialist party may again resume office. I hope also that the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) will not expect me to support his Motion, and, unhappily, while not supporting his Motion, I find myself equally unable to support the Amendment, because my realistic mind teaches me that it is impossible to envisage a period in the history of the world as we know it when an international police force can either be raised, equipped or function. I will


try to demonstrate why I am right, but to pass for a moment to this tribunal in equity with which a large part of the Motion is concerned, candidly I am not going to refer to it at length, because I do not understand what it means. I think that it is rather a slur on the word "tribunal" that the words "in equity" should be added. A tribunal surely should carry out its function in equity to all concerned, and therefore I feel that if there is any tribunal to be established, we have a tribunal at the present time to settle all these international disputes. We have the tribunal of the League of Nations itself.

Mr. MANDER: If it is called a tribunal in equity it deals with disputes on an equitable basis and not on the basis of the law, which is a justiciable matter dealt with by the International Court of Justice.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE: Is not the law supposed to deal with matters in equity? I thought that the law was established for the purpose of ensuring that.

Mr. MANDER: Not in the World Court which only deals with justiciable matters.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman takes such a cynical view of the law that he wants to have some additional tribunal established to try and bring justice into law. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Motion and his hon. Friend who seconded it seemed to be at variance. The Motion says an international police force, but as far as I can understand the position from both speakers, they tried to edge off on the question of an international police force and to concentrate upon an international air police force, which are two very different things indeed. If you assume, and everyone must assume who urges the formation of such a force, either an international force of all arms or an international air force, where are the forces to be located? I imagine that science may one day devise a means of maintaining aeroplanes permanently in the air, for, after all, that is the only neutral zone that is left in the world. Any land, any territory, any country that might be selected as neutral might any day become a potential belligerent and therefore it could not be neutral. Consequently, you must select the air.

Science, as I have said, may devise means of keeping aeroplanes in the air, but I cannot see any development of science to enable tanks, battleships or guns to be anchored in the ether. That is something even beyond the best science and something which even the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton has not yet attempted to solve.
The hon. Member is an eloquent advocate, but, like all eloquent advocates, he stresses the good features of his own case and neglects the bad. We all know that in theory the ideal of an international police force is perfect: that of the virtuous nations of the world uniting to punish the sinner. The hon. Member would no doubt say: "That is not so; it is the virtuous nations of the world uniting to prevent the sinner from sinning." I will accept that correction, but if the virtuous nations go on trying to prevent the sinner from sinning and the sinner refuses to stop his sinning, ultimately punishment must be meted out. Then you are up against force, up against war. You are up against the very thing which the hon. Member is apparently trying to prevent.
So far as I can see, the hon. Member makes a mistake in his whole philosophy and in his whole thesis on this subject. He bases his argument on the fact that armaments are the things most likely to produce war. Never was such a mistake made. Armaments do not produce war. There was war before ever a tank, an aeroplane or a gun vas devised, and when only slings or bows and arrows were used. Armaments merely affect the results of war, but never its inception, as history has shown: War springs from entirely different reasons; it springs from greed, envy or revenge. I admit, in answer to the unspoken question of the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton, that the strongly armed nation no doubt shows less concern about war than the weakly armed nation. Therefore, the hon. Member will say: "You need to equip the League of Nations with more arms still," so as to enable it to cope with the strongly armed or possibly the super-armed State of which he complains. Can anyone visualise what the result would be in adopting the hon. Member's policy to avoid war?
Let us consider the actual operation of starting this international police force.


What about the command and what about the staff? Wherever you have an international police force you must have training centres, barracks, depots, aerodromes and the various equipment and methods of carrying on which are required by an army, navy or air force. There are other problems. There is the problem, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) with regard to language. If you have 54 nations loyally subscribing to the League of Nations, you would have a score of different languages. Who is going to decide what language should be used. Unless Esperanto, as my hon. Friend suggested, were introduced, I cannot conceive how the various instructions and orders on which the efficiency of an armed force depend, would be carried out. We should have many troubles to face.
We should have to consider the question of command. Is it possible to conceive that an enlightened nation like ourselves, allied possibly to a virile nation like the Serbs, serving under a Liberian commander-in-chief? Although that may be an exaggerated suggestion, that is what might possibly happen under this policy, because we should bind ourselves all to join together to serve under, to work with and to fight with all these various nations comprising the new assembly of 54, or whatever the number might be.
Again, what is to be the position if you bring it down to the purely personal philosophy of the individual What is to be the position of the soldier of a State member of the League who is asked to give his loyalty to an army that may be turned to killing his own family? I ask any government in any part of the world whether they could stand up to the proposition that one of their own sworn soldiers, on the courage and gallantry of whom depends the success of whatever enterprise they may be engaged upon, should give his loyalty to an organisation that might at any time be turned against his own wife and children. Take the position of the strongly armed nation. Would they willingly subscribe to part of their forces, seeing that they are strongly armed already and able to maintain themselves on their own feet, being handed over to this international organisation, which in turn might operate against them?
When we look at the Preamble of the Covenant we find that it says that "scrupulous respect" shall be paid to international obligations of mutual co-operation or non-aggression. Take as an instance what happened last year when, owing to the death of their heroic King, Jugo-Slavia felt that she had a case against Hungary. Supposing in order to satisfy the passionate revenge and grief which was caused to that nation by the death of her King, she had invaded Hungary. The League of Nations would have had to meet to decide which was the aggressor, and inevitably their award would have been against Jugo-Slavia as the aggressor. Immediately this international force would have been brought into operation. But what about the scrupulous respect for international engagements referred to in the Preamble of the Covenant? Jugo-Slavia has international engagements with Czechoslovakia and Rumania. What would have happened would have been that this international force would have been so whittled away by taking from it the forces of those countries that could not possible subscribe to it, that eventually it would have been either destroyed or it would have been unable to take part in the righteous cause visualised by the hon. Member.
I find myself loaded with so many arguments against this international force that I am afraid I should weary the House if I advanced them. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton in principle and in theory. In his idealism I nearly always agree with him and it is only when we come to practice that I find myself in disagreement with him. I should like him to direct that great conception of world peace that he has so much in mind along more practical lines. He has many qualities which could be used for the benefit of the country and the peace of the world if only he could balance out the idealism with a practical outlook. Therefore, while I honestly and candidly subscribe to the idealism of this project I cannot see how it could work out successfully in practice, if only for one reason, and that is the question of finance.
For the last ten years we have seen how difficult it is to collect subscriptions from members of the League of Nations. How


are they going to face the still more onerous contributions which they will have to pay in order to form this super-State which is going to overawe the nations of the world? If the hon. Member uses his own private resources to assist the League of Nations in its unenviable task it may be of some assistance, but I cannot see the taxpayer of this country subscribing further to this utopian idea. If my hon. Friend feels himself so wedded to interference with the peace of the world that he must force us into a war again, will he not remember that there is no one in this House but wants peace, there is no one in the country who wants war, there is no one who wants to see the young people of this country, from whatever section of society they may be drawn, thrown into the horrors and miseries of the last war. We have still one resource; we have still Article XVI which has been used, perhaps not very effectively and perhaps with no great success in stopping war, but it has taught the nations of the world how they can co-operate, it has taught them how easy co-operation is and it has also taught non-league member nations that there is still vitality in the league. Let us carry on with economic sanctions under Article XVI, and by doing so avoid the flower of our youth being again destroyed.

9.58 p.m.

Mr. EDE: While listening to the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Lieut.-Colonel Moore) I have been reminded of the Bourbons, who learned nothing and forgot nothing. It seems to me that the hon. and gallant Member is in much the same position, although his own presence in this House should have been one of the strongest reminders that history has completely falsified all his arguments. I understand that he has some relationship with Ireland, he represents a Scottish constituency and he comes to Westminster to exercise his legislative functions. It is not so long ago in the realm of history when those who were trying to bring these three nations together in the way they are in his own person would have been regarded as attempting an impossibility, as impossible as he regards everything for which we have been pleading tonight.
The hon. and gallant Member alluded to the difficulty of language in an international

force. For a brief time during the War I was attached to the Portuguese Army. I was under orders, the colonel sent me there, and as the Portuguese were not very often in harm's way after the first experience, I was sorry when I was removed. It was true that there were some difficulties. I spoke French after the manner of Stratford-atte-Bow, and I discovered a Portuguese noncommissioned officer of equal rank with myself who spoke French after, I imagine, the manner of Lisbon or Oporto. Still we managed not too greatly to confuse the troops. My principal task was to teach the Portuguese how to get a gas mask on in six seconds, and that can be done by ocular demonstration rather better than by verbal explanation. The fact that we won the War in the end with or without the help of the Portuguese shows that even language in an international force is not the difficulty which the hon. and gallant Member would have us believe. His argument was really directed against the greatest of all military truths discovered in every war that where you have allied troops you are bound in the end to have unity of command. I doubt very much whether at the beginning of the War you could have got the assent of this House to our troops serving under the orders of a French marshal, but we came to it in the end.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE: In the case of the War it was the combined allied troops acting under one Commander-in-Chief to defeat the common enemy. In this case you are going to have an allied army to hit one of themselves. That is entirely different.

Mr. EDE: That, point has already been answered by my hon. Friend behind me, and I am quite prepared to leave it where he left it. I believe that ultimately the nations of the world will be compelled to accept the doctrine of an international police force, just as in this country during the last. 100 years we have been compelled to accept the idea of a local police force controlled and established under the Home Officc. I am a member of a standing joint committee and I cannot have an additional constable in my police force without the assent of the Home Secretary, or make a constable into a sergeant above the establishment unless I get the right hon. Gentleman's


consent. These police forces within the country are valuable and act on a co-operative basis where there are cases of public excitement. When Sir Robert Peel first established what is now the Metropolitan Police Force the establishment of a local police force controlled by the Home Office and available for duty in any part of the country would have been quite unthinkable.
I ask the hon. and gallant Member to believe that the world does move, even if it moves slowly, and I cannot think that the nations of the world will be content to leave each nation to settle the sort of armed forces it ought to have. That way madness and destruction lie. In the past few years we have seen enough and heard enough from hon. Members opposite to make us realise the disaster towards which we are again heading if we allow that doctrine to regain dominance. I hope and believe that as a result, of the experience we have been through we shall realise that someone has to say the extent to which each nation shall be allowed to arm and that this fear of the strong armed nation defying the nations of the world will not be a practical danger in the future because the nations will have combined to prevent any one nation getting into that position again.

10.5 p.m.

Mr. C. S. TAYLOR: The hon. Member who proposed this Motion talked about political difficulties which stood in his way in forming this international police force. For my part I think that the hon. Member should be like the man in the film scenario written by Mr. H. G. Wells and entitled "The Man who could work Miracles." I am perfectly certain that if he had the power of working a miracle an international police force would be set up: but otherwise I have certain doubts. I had certain doubts, also, when I heard one of the hon. Members opposite make some remark about the French Fleet not turning up at the right moment. I think it is a possibility. Because of these possibilities I set myself to try to evolve some other solution which might help us in our difficulties. First, I would describe myself as a peace-loving citizen, although I did not have an opportunity of taking part in the last War. And I will say that unless aggressive action is taken against Great

Britain or against the British Empire I do not think I should be very ready to join in the next war. I will try to disperse the suspicions of any hon. Members that I may be showing the white feather by telling them that I should be one of the first to go should the British Empire or Great Britain be affected. I believe I am voicing not only my own opinion in this matter but a very considerable body of opinion among the youth of this country.
Yet, although I am a peace-loving citizen, I am one of those who believe that if our armaments had not been reduced to such a minimum the present international disturbance would not have occurred. I would remind hon. Members that the programme of re-armament for the sake of peace which the Government championed during the General Election is not by any means a new idea. It is an idea that has been tried and tested throughout the history of the world. Tacitus wrote:
The peace of nations cannot be secured without arms, nor arms without pay, nor pay without taxes.
And when he said that the peace of nations cannot be secured without arms, I do not believe that he was referring to an international police force. I, for one, am delighted that this pillar, as I consider it, in the foundations of the peace of the world is being restored. I would venture again to make a statement which I made when I first spoke in this House, and that is that I believe that the peace of the world depends very largely on the strength of Britain. We heard in the early part of the afternoon the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir Henry Croft) refer to the League of Nations within the Empire, and I have the greatest sympathy with this project, as for any project which tends to draw the bonds of the Empire together and helps to ensure the peace of the world. I believe in the maintenance and not in the disintegration of our Empire. I do not believe that we should at this time consider plans of handing over or of making arrangements that Australia should be provided for Japan. I believe that we should preserve the great bonds which hold our Empire together at this time. Rather I think it might be possible to send a selection of books on birth control to Japan. I suppose it may be claimed that hon. Members opposite are


as strongly interested in peace as we are. But there is a German proverb which runs:
Peace is always the final aim of war.
I suppose that hon. Members who are in favour of the imposition of military sanctions and of the principle of war to end war—of which we heard in 1914—must support the sentiment of the German proverb—that peace is always the final aim of war. But I believe that peace can be achieved without war and without the bloodthirsty atrocities and individual and national sacrifices which are necessitated by war. You will forgive me if I have to be somewhat of a disciple of Tacitus in this year 1935, rather than a disciple, say, of Lenin, but I have to admit that I find great truth in the writings of that eminent man. Especially in view of the recent disturbances in Abyssinia I find the following quotation very relevant:
In tumults and dissensions the worst man has the most power. Peace and quiet bring out the good qualities of men.
It is probably undesirable that this Debate should turn wholly to the Italo-Abyssinian question, because we are discussing the peace of the world; but in view of the war now going on in Abyssinia I think it is relevant to examine some of the causes of it. Developing my argument in relation to the strength of Britain and its effect on the peace of the world, although I do not agree that might is right I do believe that had not our defence forces been reduced to such a lamentable condition much of the present trouble and difficulties and the present war in Abyssinia might have been avoided. [An HON. MEMBER: "How?"] An hon Member opposite asks me "How?" Simply because the aggressor would have found that he would have had something a little bit more tough and difficult to deal with than this country appears to be at the present moment.

Mr. SILVERMAN: Does the hon. Member agree with military sanctions?

Mr. TAYLOR: I never suggested that.

Mr. A. HENDERSON: If weakness in armaments at the present moment is the reason why we have this trouble with Abyssinia, why is it that in 1914, when this country had the most powerful Navy

the world has ever seen, we were not able to prevent war breaking out?

Mr. TAYLOR: The hon. Gentleman opposite forgets the League of Nations, although I think the League of Nations has procrastinated considerably during the past few years. In answer to the other hon. Member opposite who asked whether I believe in military sanctions, I would say that I certainly do not. Nobody ever suggested that we should impose military sanctions. I did net suggest that we should impose military sanctions. I do not wish to speak for or against the principle of collective security. I do not undertake to say and I do not think that anybody at this stage can say whether collective security is going to be successful or not. We hope it will be successful, but I re-affirm that, had the defence forces of Great Britain been adequate, much of this trouble would have been prevented. Unfortunately it is no good dwelling upon "ifs" at this juncture. Rather must we look to the future. I, for one, am supporting the Government in their plans for re-armament and I think we ought to continue to impress on the Government the urgency of the necessity for re-armament. I also wish to express the view that a closer working connection and better understanding between the English-speaking nations would go a long way to produce what we all most desire, namely, world peace. In conclusion I would read to the House a cynical poem of the 17th century which says:
Plenty breeds pride; Pride, Envy; Envy, Warre.
Warre, Poverty; Poverty, humble Care.
Humility breeds Peace and Peace breeds Plenty.
Thus, round the World doth rowle alternatly.

Mr. E. J. WILLIAMS: Does the hon. Member suggest that rearmament is an expression, of humility?

Mr. TAYLOR: I merely quoted that poem as a warning and not for any purpose of argument.

10.18 p.m.

Mr. LOFTUS: I turn from the Motion to refer briefly to one remark made by my hon. Friend the Member for East-bourne (Mr. Taylor). He said something to the effect that Japan, having regard to pressure of population, ought to learn


more about birth control. [Laughter.] I strongly suggest that this is not a laughing matter and that the one piece of advice we ought never to give to such nations as Japan, Germany and Italy is to limit their population.

Mr. TAYLOR: If the hon. Member will allow me to intervene for the purpose of self-justification, may I say that I certainly did not mean it as a laughing matter?

Mr. LOFTUS: I can imagine few things more calculated to treat international than advice of that character. [HON. MEMBERS "Why?"] It is quite obvious that if you preach to virile nations like Germany that they ought to stop increasing their population, they will retaliate by saying that there is sufficient room in the world, and that if you will not allow them to get their share by peaceful means they will obtain it by war. Now I turn to the Motion. It has been criticised vigorously as to its general idea by the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. H. Kerr) and others, but I am going to support it. I suggest that a good deal of the criticism has been applicable not so much to this moderate Motion, which asks that serious consideration should be given, to these proposals, as to a Motion ordering the Government, immediately to take steps to set up an international police force and an equity tribunal. This Motion, as I say, only asks its to give serious consideration to these problems. I can imagine no more worthy subject to occupy the attention of this House.
I will deal first with the idea, of an international police force. If we seriously consider that subject, we shall be driven logically and ultimately to this, that we have to start by an international air force for Europe alone. I think that is the first and the most necessary step. I heard an hon. Gentleman speaking from the Front Bench minimise the danger of air attack and the danger from civil planes converted into bombers. We know that many civil planes in Europe to-day are already fitted as bombers. I listened in this House to the Prime Minister, in language which moved us all, pointing out that there was no real defence from the menace of the air. I sat in the House myself after that speech, and I looked at the building and asked

myself, "How many years will this building last safe from air attack? How many years will it be before the Abbey near by may be destroyed? "And it is not only in London, but if this menace continues, if we cannot check war, if we get a general European war, all the great monuments built by mankind in the past must be destroyed. That must happen. Therefore I feel that the most urgent task before statesmen to-day is somehow or other to control and get control of the menace of the air.
I feel that the Motion put forward to-day gives us an opportunity of facing and considering that question and that the first step might well be the internationalisation of the air for all kinds of planes, not merely military planes, but civil planes as well. I think it must come to that. If we had a sane civilisation, we should do one of two things with the air force—we should either internationalise it or abolish it. I know it is said, "If you abolish it what would it mean? Think of the question of speed." We moderns make a fetish of speed, a fetish of moving about more and more quickly. What for? I Do we make any better use of our time or our talents to-day than used to be the case? Do we not save time in order to waste time and fritter away time? Unless we can get control of this menace, which the moral stature of man to-day is not big enough really to control, we must get international control of the whole of the air. I therefore support the Motion, because it leads one up to facing that problem.
Then there is the other point, the question of a tribunal in equity. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ayr Burghs (Lieut.-Colonel Moore) jeered a little at this and said that surely the Hague Tribunal dealt with law and surely law includes equity. If you go to the Hague Tribunal and appeal on a question of law, the only question of law you get is with regard to the breach of a, treaty. Do you think that if you removed the injustices of treaties, if you interpreted treaties rightly, you would remove to-day all danger from or causes of war, all sense of grievance? Of course not. One of the fundamental facts of the present day is that these economic causes must cause war, and war within a few years.
This is the first occasion on which I have spoken on these lines in the House. I feel that to-day Japan, Germany, Italy and other countries have a grievance, not only a grievance of treaties bearing hardly on them, but a grievance arising from that awful economic pressure and the feeling that they may not be able to import their raw materials because their exports are checked. I feel that the controversy between my hon. Friend on this side and an hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench was really beside the mark. They were arguing about British colonies and giving them away. I suggest that if we were to get that idea out of our minds we would be able to get on and to do more. We are thinking now about Italy, with one or two small colonies. We think the same about Germany, with one or two small colonies. It is in such cases that a tribunal in equity is necessary.
You must have a tribunal to deal with things with which the Hague Tribunal cannot deal. I suggest that the proper procedure would be to have an ad hoc tribunal appointed by the League to go into the grievances of nations which may cause war, grievances which have nothing to do with treaty provisions. I regret that months ago such a tribunal was not appointed by the League and that such a tribunal has not been sitting for months past, day by day at Geneva, a tribunal with economic knowledge and able to put forward ideas to rectify the situation of such countries as Japan, Germany and Italy. I pleaded for that in this House on 23rd October. I pleaded that one more committee should be established at Geneva, for I feel that every day's delay in dealing with these essential things makes war, not a small war, but a general war, nearer. I strongly support by hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander). We may not agree about the particular type of tribunal, but the essential thing is that there should be some kind of tribunal to consider the grievances of nations which have nothing to do with breaches of the law.

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Viscount Cranborne): The subject with which the

House has been dealing to-night is no new one to it. We have on many occasions during the last few years had debates on this question. The last time, if I remember aright, was just over two years ago, on a Motion which was brought forward, as this has been tonight, by the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander). The Government would not wish in any way to criticise the hon. Member for bringing forward the subject again. After all it is, I suppose, one of the most treasured rights of the House of Commons that private Members should, on private Members' days, raise subjects and invite discussion on questions which do not come within the purview of the ordinary business of Parliament, and, indeed, we have cause to thank the hon. Member for framing his Motion so widely as to permit free and frank discussion. I do not think that I have ever heard any discussion in the House of Commons range quite so wide as the discussion to-night. I have only one, I will not say criticism, but complaint, against the hon. Member. He said that this Motion did not refer, as I understood it, by any means to an international police force now, but any time, he said, in the next 100 years, 50 years, far ahead—it was just the principle that mattered. There is nothing about that in the wording of the Motion, which is:
To call attention to the desirability of an international police force for the better maintenance of world order.
That does not say 50 years ahead, and, indeed, the hon. Member's is own supporter the hon. and learned Member for Bolton. (Mr. Entwistle), took it to mean now. Therefore, I hope that the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton will forgive me if I deal in the few moments which are at my disposal with this question from both aspects.
There is one difference between the debate to-night and the debate we had two years ago. On that occasion the hon. Member devoted himself entirely to an international police force. To-night he is spreading his net a little wider. He has included a tribunal in equity. I feel certain that he will agree with me when I say that those two questions are what one may call variations of the same theme, the theme being that the world is now becoming an international organism, and that we ought to have one system of justice and one police force,


just as we do in our own country. I was intrigued, if I may say so in passing, to hear him allude to the Heptarchy, and was a little flattered by it, because I used that particular reference in the speech I made in opposing him on the last occasion. Now he is using it in support of his Motion. I hope it means that I have put him a little bit in the right direction. Of course, it is largely true that the world has become an international organism. We all know it is true economically; it almost might be said to be becoming one great economic machine. Nations which in the past were independent and self-sufficing are now becoming rapidly interdependent and bound to each other by a thousand links of commerce and mutual interest.
One might even say that civilisation is becoming standardised. If you were to go to any of the great capitals of the world you would find people wearing the same clothes, reading the same books, seeing the same films and thinking the same ideas. We are really becoming, in all nations, much more like each other, at any rate superficially, and also much more dependent on each other. I think most of us agree that the world would be a much happier and a much more prosperous place if the Governments and the peoples—this applies to the people just as much as to the Governments—agreed to settle all their disputes by arbitration and peaceful means. If that could happen, great armed forces such as we see creating such disturbance at the present time, would become unnecessary, and the Motion which the hon. Gentleman has put forward would be not merely a distant hope and a distant ideal but a practical possibility.
To this reign of international law and order to which we are all looking, the League of Nations is the first step, and the League has the overwhelming support of the people of this country, but the fact that we are ready to take that first step does not necessarily mean that we should be wise to go rapidly ahead without looking in the least where we are going. The nations of the world are in the position of a man who is crossing a quaking bog. That man clearly has to make his foothold safe before he can take another step; otherwise, instead of getting to his destination more quickly, he might never arrive there at all.
Look at the world to-day. Can anyone say that the nations have reached a stage of civilisation in which they would be willing entirely to abolish their national forces and to trust to an international authority? At this very moment a war is raging. At this very moment Europe is seething with discontent, distrust and suspicion. I shall not try to defend that situation, and I do not want to defend it. I merely state it as a fact. In such circumstances, if the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton, or the British Government, or anybody else, were to go to the German Government, the Italian Government, or the French Government, and to suggest that they should abandon, as I think the hon. and learned Member for Bolton (Mr. Entwistle) suggested to-night, all their national defence forces, and trust to an international force, I am afraid he would be regarded either as an amiable lunatic or, possibly, as a very sinister person with some very dark motive behind his suggestion.

Mr. ENTWISTLE: I must point out that I only mentioned the abolition of military aeroplanes and said that this country had stated that we should be willing to abolish them subject to the control of civil aviation. That is all I said.

Viscount CRANBORNE: I am very sorry. I must have misunderstood my hon. and learned Friend. I beg his pardon. However much we may honour the sincerity of the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton and those who have supported his Motion, I am afraid that we must regard such a proposal as the abolition of air forces as not a practical proposal at the present time. If we are to assume that abolition of national forces is out of the question, it means that this international police force must function in an armed world. If it is to function, as I think we all agree it must function, for some time at any rate, in an armed world, it must be superior, and conclusively superior, to any other force that could be brought against it. What does that mean in fact? We know that in the last few months Italy has mobilised very nearly 1,000,000 men; we know that Germany is forming an army of 500,000 men; we know that France has very little less, and Russia probably rather more, than that number.
What is to be the size of the international force, at the present moment, to deal with a situation such as might be created? We are told that it should be stationed in Switzerland or in some other one of the very small neutral countries, but I doubt very much whether one of the small neutral countries would be adequate to hold the international force that would be needed; it would probably have to lap out into the surrounding districts. The same is true, after all, of aeroplanes. We have been told that there should be an international air force—a police force—which should be available; but, if it is to be available and effective, and if it is to do its work in all parts of the world, it is quite obvious that, with the national air forces which are at present in existence, it would have to number many thousands of aeroplanes. I think it was the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton who said that if we had disarmed the position would be very much easier. I think we all agree with that; there is probably no difference of opinion in any part of the House about disarmament; I think it is generally agreed that, If we could get an international convention for the reduction and limitation of armaments, it would be of service to peace. If I remember aright, I must make one exception. The hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Lieut.-Colonel Moore) does not hold that view, but I think that in that he is almost alone in the House.
Of course it is perfectly true that the outlook at the present time is dark, but I do not think that even now we need despair of the future. Perhaps the very intensity and urgency of the danger of war may open the nations' eyes to the necessity for a measure of disarmament. It may not be so far off as some of us fear; I hope it may not; but, even if it is not so far off, I am afraid we should all reluctantly have to agree that the time has not yet come, and, if it has not yet come, I am afraid that the Motion of the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton still remains completely academic. To-night there has been no time for me to talk of all the practical difficulties—the technical difficulties. Other speakers have already mentioned them. There are, of course, difficulties of command, of composition, and of organisation; there are difficulties of maintenance and of

mobilisation. All these difficulties are real; they are genuine difficulties. The force must have plans in advance. Who is to draw up those plans? Whom are they to concern? Against who are they to be aimed? Where is the force to be situated? All these are practical difficulties. I do not myself think that they are insurmountable; indeed, I am certain that they are not; but they have not been solved yet—

Mr. MANDER: Does not my Noble Friend think that that is a very good reason for giving the matter serious consideration in the terms of the Motion?

Viscount CRANBORNE: No. We are all in favour of giving the Motion serious consideration, but there is much more in the Motion than that. It says:
serious consideration should be given to the desirability of an international police force for the better maintenance of world order.
As I have already explained, that would be taken in many quarters, and it was taken by the hon. and learned Member for Bolton, as meaning now. It is not a mere matter of consideration.

Mr. ENTWISTLE: Subject to international agreement, of course. I did not say now.

Viscount CRANBORNE: I was saying that I did not think it was possible now, not that it was not desirable now. I have drawn attention to these technical, practical difficulties which I am sure are not insurmountable but which have not yet been surmounted, and I believe that is the reason why this question is less often talked about at Geneva than, shall we say, in Grosvenor Crescent.
There is another question mentioned in the Motion. I am very much afraid that the same difficulty may face us with regard to the tribunal in equity as a practicable proposition at the moment as faces us with regard to the police force. After all, there is one essential concomitant to a tribunal in equity, and that is that the nations must have the will to peace. I am afraid it is lamentably evident that not all the nations have a will to peace at present. Machinery exists in the Covenant both for the regulation of grievances and the discussion of changes. It has been argued that that machinery is not adequate, but I am afraid the honest truth is that there


has not been the will to use it. The machinery has been there, but the will has been lacking. In those circumstances just to start new machinery would be absolutely futile. It would be like creating a body without a spirit. It would have no life in it whatever. Let us set ourselves in this country and other countries to create the spirit and to give life to the will to peace and then, if it is found that the machinery laid down in the Covenant is not adequate, let us take steps to alter it.
I take it that the reason the hon. Member put down his Motion was really to ventilate the subject, and I think he has been very successful, because we have had an exceedingly interesting if somewhat wide discussion. I hope he will now accede to my request and withdraw it. I do not think it will be possible for the Government to accept it in exactly its present form for the reasons I have explained. I, personally, find myself in sympathy with the Amendment in that it says that the time is not quite ripe but, after all, there is not really a very great difference between them. Let us content ourselves with recognising that our ultimate aim, the creation of an international system of law and order, is the same, and not pass on to any further steps until we have made the present position secure.

Mr. H. KERR: If the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) is prepared to consider withdrawing his Motion, I will withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question again proposed.

Mr. MANDER: In view of the not unsympathetic reply of the Noble Lord, and the full discussion that has taken place, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

ELECTRICITY (SUPPLY) ACTS.

Resolved,
That the Special Order made by the Electricity Commissioners under the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 to 1935, and confirmed by the Minister of Transport under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1919, and the Public Works Facilities Act, 1930, in respect of part of the urban district of Mold, in the county of Flint, which was presented on the 3rd day of December, 1935, he approved.

Resolved,
That the Special Order made by the Electricity Commissioners under the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 to 1935, and confirmed by the Minister of Transport under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1919, and the Public Works Facilities Act, 1930, in respect of part of the rural district of Barnstaple, in the county of Devon, which was presented on the 3rd day of December, 1935, he approved.

Resolved,
That the Special Order made by the Electricity Commissioners under the Electricity (Supply) Acts, 1882 to 1935, and the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electric Power Act, 1929, and confirmed by the Minister of Transport under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1919, and the Public Works Facilities Act, 1930, to increase the capital and borrowing powers of the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electric Power Company, which was presented on the 3rd day of December, 1935, be approved."—[Captata Austin Hudson.]

ESTIMATES COMMITTEE.

Ordered,

That Mr. Cocks be discharged from the Select Committee on Estimates and that Mr. Ede be added to the Committee.—[Sir George Penny.]

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

COAL INDUSTRY (WAGES).

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Commander Southby.]

10.52 p.m.

The SECRETARY for MINES (Captain Crookshank): I think it will suit the convenience of the House, and certainly will be fitting, that I should take this opportunity of making a not very long statement from this bench with regard to the present situation in the mining industry. We have been for some time concerned with a wage dispute in one of our great industries, and I know that this can be said without fear of contradiction—that the case which has been presented for increased wages for the mine workers has a large measure of support in the public Press, and in the country, and was reflected in this House in the Debate which we had last week. I want to make it clear at the start that of course this is a dispute between


the two parties concerned in the industry. All along the Government has been in the position of a mediator. I myself on behalf of the Government have repeatedly met representative owners, representative men, officials of the owners' organisation, officials of the Mineworkers Federation, and several times the members of the Executive of the Mineworkers' Federation.
And then it has been my business to put first to one side and then to the other side the views of the other party. I think that I can put it best perhaps by saying that the negotiations have been carried on just now through me rather than by me. But while there had been one earlier meeting of officials of both sides at which the owners informed the men of the action that they were taking with a view to raising the proceeds, it was not until yesterday that a more formal meeting was held when representative coalowners met representatives of the men to report the progress that they had made. I understand that the discussions yesterday were carried on with regard to various aspects and, as was stated in the communiqu· to the Press last night, which was, I gather, an agreed statement, the owners reported to the representatives of the men the efforts that they had made to increase prices of coal as a means to an increase of wages. The statement said:
The owners regretted that at the moment the response to their requests for increases in prices under existing contracts had not been as satisfactory as they bad hoped. Under present circumstances the most that they could say was that in every district an increase of wages would take place as from 1st January, the amount and method of application of such advances to be determined by the parties in the districts. The workmen's representatives were dissatisfied with the position as stated by the owners, and the owners' representatives undertook, at the request of the workmen's representatives, to ask the districts to decide and intimate at the earliest possible moment for the information of the Mineworkers' Federation representatives particulars of the offers which they were prepared to make. It was understood that a further meeting would be held at an early date.
That was the brief statement which was published last night. This morning the Executive of the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain came to see me at their request to report, as I said in reply to a question to the hon. Gentleman the

Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. G. Williams) this afternoon, on the situation in the light of yesterday's meeting, and the main suggestion that they made to the Government was that money should be found or guaranteed from public funds for miners' wages until such time as the selling schemes might have an effect upon wages. I saw the Executive of the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain again this evening, and I made to them a statement on behalf of the Government. With the respect which is due to this House, I felt that I must take the opportunity of the Adjournment Motion to-night—the earliest opportunity available to me—of putting before hon. Members the statement which I then made. It was to this effect:
The Government is not prepared to adopt the suggestion made by the executive of the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain that a subsidy should be granted from public funds temporarily to augment wages in the mining industry, nor the alternative suggestions of a similar kind which have been made, namely, a direct loan from public funds or a Government guarantee for a loan raised from other sources.
The Government is pleased to note that a meeting has been held between representative coalowners and representatives of the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain; it hopes that this method of discussion will be continued and widened; and that it will not again be necessary for the Secretary for Mines to act as intermediary between the parties.
Nevertheless, the Government does not propose to disassociate itself from the subsequent developments, with which the Secretary for Mines will remain constantly and closely in touch, and the Government will use its good offices to assist the coalowners in their endeavours to secure voluntarily from big consumers increases in price for the specific purpose of increasing wages.
It may be pointed out that a very substantial advance has been made recently in three matters of the greatest importance to the mineworkers. These are:

(a) The organisation of the selling of coal on lines acceptable to the Government and in such a way as to improve the proceeds of the industry with advantage to the wage position has been promised by the end of June.
(b) Actual contact between representative employers and I the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain has been secured.
(c) An increase in wages in every district with effect from the 1st January next has been promised.

The Government hopes that the Executive Committee of the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain will draw the attention of the Delegate Conference to the very grave responsibility which it will assume, both in relation to the workers in the minefields


and to the country as a whole, if it should fail to allow the full investigation of the offer made by the owners yesterday.
That was the statement which I made this afternoon on behalf of His Majesty's Government. I myself do not think that, as the Delegate Conference was only adjourned until to-morrow and will be sitting again, it will be wise for me to discuss all the questions involved. I would merely say this to the House with regard to the three points specifically mentioned in the statement, that, as to the first, the Government believe that their long-term policy to centralise the selling of coal—a policy which will lead to improved organisation in the selling of coal from top to bottom—is the biggest contribution made for many years towards an improvement in the wages position.

It being Eleven of the Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain Margesson.]

Captain CROOKSHANK: As regards the second point, the Government have brought pressure to bear upon the owners to meet the miners and have succeeded in a few weeks in converting the non-possumus attitude of the coalowners into a positive one, with the result that there was a meeting between representatives of the coalowners and the Mineworkers' Federation to discuss the position, yesterday. As regards the third point, the owners at the meeting yesterday gave an assurance, set out in the official communiqué which I have quoted, of an increase in wages in all districts on 1st January. If the Mineworkers' Federation through their Delegate Conference take the drastic action of precipitating a stoppage in the coal industry, they will prejudice the possibility of bringing more money into the proceeds of the industry and also lose the opportunity of the increased wages now offered to them. In the interests of themselves as well as the interests of the whole country, I most sincerely hope that they will think long before they take any final line which would prejudice that.
That is the statement that I thought it was right to put before the House as soon as I could, and having done that, I have discharged what I felt to be my duty to-night.

11.2 p.m.

Mr. ATTLEE: The statement which the hon. and gallant Member has just read to the House brings this country face to face with a grave industrial crisis. This is not a mere matter of a quarrel between two sides in a particular industry. It is a vital matter which concerns the whole economic life of the country. The Executive of the Miners' Federation, men who have been dealing with this matter with the greatest possible patience, have carefully examined the statement and find it unsatisfactory. The just claims of the miners have not been met, and a delegate meeting has been called for to-morrow morning to decide whether or not notices shall be handed in. The ballot vote in the coalfield has shown how strongly the vast majority of the miners are behind this claim—a claim for a uniform advance of 2s. a day for adults and 1s. a day for boys, and also for a national agreement.
This brings us to a very serious position. The Minister said that no one could doubt the overwhelming sympathy of the people of this country with the miners' claim. That has been expressed in public by public men, in the Press and on the Floor of this House. There is a widespread feeling throughout the country that the miners have had a rough deal, and public opinion in this country must be taken into account. I think, too, there is a realisation throughout the country that this is not a question of a struggle between two sections in a trade. There is a, vital question behind it, of which the Government must take note. It is the question of what is to be the treatment by the people of this country of the men on whose work the industrial life of the country depends.
I want to deal with one or two points in the Minister's statement. In the first place, no subsidy has been asked for in the sense implied in the Minister's statement. What has been asked is that there should be an anticipation of the increased revenues which the Government claim will accrue to the industry as a result of these developments—an advance to cover an immediate increase. I do not think that that is unreasonable. Secondly, despite the opinion expressed on both sides of this House and in the other House, that the two national bodies should be brought together, they have


not yet been brought together. There has not been negotiation on a national basis. Certain coalowners, but not the bulk of them, who can speak for the Mining Association, have met the Mineworkers' Federation's representatives. It is no use saying that pressure has been brought to bear on the owners to meet the Mineworkers' Federation, as if the two were on exactly the same level. The Mineworkers' Federation have shown their willingness to meet the representatives of the owners, although they are not fully represented. The Mining Association have not met the miners.
Granting the merits of the long-term policy of the Government it is perfectly clear that it cannot affect the immediate situation. It will take months to work out. There has been no firm offer for a uniform increase of wages. There has been a suggestion that there will be or may be an increase of varying amount in different districts. That does not meet the miners' claim. It is remarkable that on this question there has been evidence of a willingness of consumers to face the fact that the miners have a claim to a livelihood and are willing to consider an increase in prices, but it is conditional on an assurance that the miners are going to get it. In fact a uniform advance in wages is really a condition precedent to getting the consent of the consumers of this country to an increase of prices. The Minister appeals to the miners to think again. I ask the Government to think again before they plunge this country into a struggle the repercussions of which no one can tell. If the Government are right in their anticipation that by their efforts increased revenue is going to flow into the industry, the advance required is very small, the risk of loss is very small; but if this country is going to be plunged into a great struggle, the loss is certain and will be immense. The miners have been very patient; they have been patient for years. This matter comes up within a few days of Christmas; the miners' demand was made in April.
There has been a long delay in dealing with the matter. The Government must have known how urgent and vital it was to the country, and if the Government allow this matter to drift into an industrial strife, they will have to answer to public opinion which, I believe, will

say that they ought never to have allowed it to arise. It is no use saying that they are going to do something a good time hence. This demand has been made for a long time. The miners have been patient, and have the backing of public opinion in this country. They have the backing of people on the other side, besides that of the organised workers of the country. I believe they have behind them the bulk even of the consumers. The people are behind the miners and a very heavy responsibility will rest on the Government if they do not take action to stop this terrible calamity.

11.10 p.m.

Mr. G. HALL: I think we have reasonable ground for complaint against the Prime Minister in connection with this matter. He has not even heard from the executive of the Mineworkers' Federation their case in the matter, notwithstanding that repeated applications have been made for him to meet the executive. While the Secretary for Mines has been in touch with both sides, it must be remembered that he is not the Prime Minister. We feel that the case of the miners is so urgent and important that the Prime Minister ought to have made himself acquainted at first hand with the facts from those who are capable of dealing with the matter. Notwithstanding the importance of the foreign situation, we must not forget that this matter of the mines dispute affects millions of persons who are directly connected with the mining industry and if a stoppage takes place it will affect the whole industrial life of the nation. My right hon. Friend has referred to the fact that the Government are not entirely blameless for the delay in this matter. On 16th April they were made acquainted with the situation and from April to October the only contribution made by the Government to deal with the situation was the sending of two letters to the executive of the mineworkers' association.
Here again, in this dispute we see the owners' strategy and they have the Government on their side. There was a remarkable Debate in this House, as in another place, on Wednesday last. Insistence upon a national agreement and a uniform increase of wages between all districts was heard from every side—both from the miners representatives and from those who spoke on behalf of the


mineowners. In addition, the public mind has been prepared for increased prices, if there is a guarantee that the increase of prices will pass to the miners as an increase in wages. The terms read by the Secretary for Mines are just a shadow without any substance. There is no guarantee. My right hon. Friend dealt with the question of subsidy. Let me deal with the question of selling agencies—selling agencies in July next year, and even then there is no guarantee in the statement that the proceeds, if any of the selling agencies will mean increased wages to the miners. The miners have asked for a universal increase of 2s. and there can be no answer to it. This statement certainly does not meet their request.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman also referred to contact between the representatives of the Mining Association and the representatives of the miners. These were not negotiations. The parties were called together to hear a statement from the owners—nothing more and nothing less. Can the hon. Member give any guarantee that in the course of proceedings which must take place, even under the long-term programme, negotiations will take place between the executive of the Mineworkers' Federation and the Mining Association as such? I think these questions will be put at the conference to-morrow, and they should be answered by someone on behalf of the Government in readiness for the replies which will be made to-morrow. As far as the increase in wages is concerned, here we are at a crucial point in these negotiations and yet the negotiating body on behalf of three-quarters of a million miners have not yet heard from the mineowners as to what the increases are to be. What they are told is to go back to the districts. Well, we have been back in the districts from 1926 to the present time.
The hon. Member for North Leeds (Mr. Peake) has referred to the effect of district negotiations upon other districts. He was under no illusion. It is very evident that the Government have more confidence in the coalowners than some of the coalowners have in their own body. The hon. Member must know that the offer outlined in this statement, district by district, will not be a uniform offer—there is the difficulty of the exporting

districts. He knows that where a large proportion of the coal is exported, the increase upon inland coal must be two or three times that of the increase in those districts that are selling and producing coal mainly for export purposes. This statement on behalf of the Government cannot meet the case which has been put by the miners. This statement simply deals with a temporary increase. We want something permanent. It does not deal with this very important question of deficiency. It would take too much time to deal with that subject now but it may be brought out in the Debate on Friday. Then there is the question of ratio. I would mention that each district, as a result of the ratio in the agreements existing, would be entitled to 1s. 8d. per ton before the miners would be entitled to any increase at all. It would work for the sole purpose of keeping this increased profit for the mineowners—and the House can then see the value of the statement which has been submitted.
Let me repeat that the miners expect a uniform offer on a national basis. The Government should see that that offer is forthcoming. This offer is entirely unsatisfactory. The feeling of the conference this afternoon, despite what the Secretary for Mines has said, was definitely in favour of fixing a date for the tendering of notices. The Government alone can assist. The Prime Minister, notwithstanding his very heavy engagements, must come into this struggle. The miners of the country look to him to come in and assist us. I would refer to the last paragraph in the statement which the Secretary of Mines read out in which he referred to the responsibility of the miners. May I say that not only has the delegate conference a very grave responsibility but the Government has a grave responsibility as well, both in relation to the workers in the minefields and the country as a whole. If the Government fail to take the opportunity which now presents itself to settle this difficulty between the miners and the mine owners, then the Government will be lacking in their duty, and the responsibility is theirs.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-one Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.